Military Spending Continues to Grow

By Tom Kando
Read this and cry: According to the annual report of the Stockholm Peace Research Institute,(SIPRI), the world’s governments spent a combined total of $1.46 trillion on defense in 2008. Despite the worldwide recession, defense spending rose by 4% from 2007 in real dollars, and by 45% over the past 10 years.
Military spending declined briefly after the end of the Cold War. However, it underwent a gigantic increase after 9/11. Under President Bush, US military spending rose to the highest level since World War Two.

The US share of world military spending is 42%. The war on terror has also caused other countries to increase military spending.

Other rising regional superpowers are also contributing to the steady increase in world military spending. In 2008, China became, for the first time, the world’s second most powerful military power. Last year, China’s military budget rose by 15%, to $$46 billion. Over the past 19 years, China’s military budget has increased by more than 10% every single year.

The world economic recession has no impact on the amount of money countries devote to defense (NRC Handelsblad, June 10, 2009).

I suppose this calls for some comments. But what is there to say? Some will argue that the numbers prove America’s exceptional culpability (42% of the world total). Others will say that this is as it should be: There are terrorists and other bad guys out there, so we have no other choice than to defend ourselves and to be strong. Someone has to be the world’s cop, right?

Then there is the euphemistic fraudulence, unmasked long ago by George Orwell: Nowadays it’s always called “defense,” right? A century ago, governments were at least a bit more honest. It was called the Ministry of War, not the Ministry of Defense.

Calling aggression self-defense is old hat. Hitler was only the best-known practitioner of this, as when he justified the invasion of Poland by claiming that Poland was attacking Germany.
Orwell’s future governments went a step further, calling them Ministries of Peace. But we are already there. Countries nowadays engage in Police Actions, they dispatch Peace Keeping Forces, and they fire missiles called “Peace Keepers.” The killing of hundreds of women, babies and other non-combatants is called collateral damage.

And another thing: The countries which can afford it the least are the ones which spend the most on the military. Here are some rankings, from the World Fact Book:

Middle Eastern countries spend the highest percentage of their GDP on the military, namely between 9% and 11%
Israel is also high: 7%
Next are a host of African countries: 5% to 6.5%
China: 4.3%
The US and Russia: about 4%
France: 2.6%
Germany: 1.5%
Most other European countries: 0% (Iceland) to 1%
Japan: .8%leave comment here Read more...

GHOST SPEAKERS

By Madeleine Kando
One of the more disorienting experiences in my life was when I first heard my own recorded voice. I heard myself as someone else hears me. And it was a total shocker. After that, I was never too thrilled to be asked to speak in public. There is really nothing wrong with my voice, mind you. I express myself well, good choice of words and all that, but it’s the tone of my voice. Like the color and pattern of a dress. It just doesn’t work sometimes. Which brings me to the real subject of this essay…I am a radio junkie. Mostly because I am so bored driving to work. Since I teach dance for a living I have enough music in my ears to last me a lifetime and that leaves talk radio as the only other option. Believe it or not, in a country of over 300 million people, there are not too many options out there in that category. Yes, you guessed it: I listen to NPR. Every so often I give other talk radio stations a half-hearted try, but somehow I always revert back to my home station. I am a creature of habit I guess.

As all self-respecting groupies I could identify NPR voices in one second flat. I have my favorites of course, Tom Ashbrook for instance, but I won’t bore you with those details. I just want to say that, in my humble opinion, we should introduce some kind of entrance exam to decide which voices we allow on talk radio. I mean, us poor listeners have to fill in the rest of the persona whose voice we are subjected to. We can be forgiving when we see a gorgeous blond on tv speak with a squeaky little voice but there are no visuals on radio, my friend. Only the damned voice! So it better be a good one.

You have ghost writers so why not have ghost speakers? I cannot tell you how many times I had to turn off the radio in the middle of an extremely fascinating discussion because the voice of the commentator was so annoying. The newscaster who has a chronic cold announcing that‘Doo beoble died yesderday id a gar accidend’. That really takes away from the severity of the announcement, don’t you think? Read more...

Slumdog Millionaire, Belatedly

Tom and Anita Kando

The movie is admittedly excellent, and real. What gets us, though, is the nearly unanimous use by reviewers and commentators of happy words like "uplifting" and "exhilarating" to describe this movie. Instead, we would use words such as "scary" and "nightmarish."

The conditions depicted in this film are like Dante's inferno. The poverty and squalor of vast tracts of Mumbai, a typical Indian mega-city. Shanty cardboard towns as far as the eye can see. What we are shown is the Armageddon to which the world may be coming, due to over-population and a globalized growth economy. People living on giant waste disposal dumps the size of mid-size American towns, like scavenging vultures. Human anthills. The horror of garbage-infested streams in which people bathe, a child escaping through feces. The terror of murderous tribal strife, in which people torch each other to death. Child kidnappers who burn out their victims' eyes to make them more effective beggars. Then the grotesque contrast with billion-dollar luxury skyscrapers inhabited by millionaire gangsters. This is uplifting? Yes, the movie deserves its Oscar. But uplifting? No. Frightening and horrific, yes.leave comment here Read more...

Jury Duty

Tom Kando

I just completed a three-week tour of jury duty. It was a criminal case. A serious violent felony. I am not going to tell you about the case. Neither am I going to pontificate about crime, laws, justice and injustice, even though I could, since I have taught criminology at the University for several decades, and I also worked at the California State prison in Vacaville. I just want to make a few comments about our judicial system, and how I experienced it as a citizen-juror and as an observer:

The Courthouse is bustling with hundreds, maybe thousands, of citizen-jurors, lawyers, cops, clerks, judges and criminals.The amount of resources our society devotes to justice and law enforcement is staggering. I estimate the case on which I served cost up to half a million dollars. The salaries, the fees of lawyers, judges, expert witnesses, the facilities, the transportation, the feeding and housing of defendants. Hundreds of prospective jurors spend day after day milling around in the courthouse, waiting to be called for jury duty, but most of the time being dismissed by the end of the day, sent back home, after having missed days on the job.
The utter lack of productivity! After being empaneled, jurors still spend more time waiting and breaking for coffee than in the courtroom, listening to and dealing with their case.

This is no one's fault. The most striking aspect is the impressive civility and intelligence of nearly everyone. Hardly anyone is irritable or impolite. From judges to attorneys to citizen-jurors, people are friendly and well-spoken. When witnesses, cops, victims and others take the stand, their mastery of the English language is excellent. When you chat with another juror over coffee, the conversation is intelligent and the words are well chosen.

The one slightly negative "vibration" is a perhaps slightly exaggerated deference shown all around, a shyness which may betray fear. Of course, upon entering the courthouse, you are bombarded with security procedures, armed personnel giving out polite but firm orders, signs with dozens of rules. Once a case gets under way, the judge admonishes the jurors and the audience about do's and don't's - upon penalty of severe fines and incarceration.

This is not a place of jest - at least not too much of it. But that's just the point: To some degree, joking is okay! The place does definitely not remind one of Stalinist Russia. There is room for some levity. People do smile and laugh, at times.

In other words, it is not fear which one feels floating around, but respect. Citizens respecting each other, civilians respecting cops and judges, and judges and cops respecting civilians. There are strict protocols as to who may talk to whom and about what, but common-sense goes a long way towards eliminating this as a serious problem. For the rest, you see people interacting, chatting, indeed having a relatively good time with each other, while waiting in hallways and anti-chambers, eating doughnuts, and then back to work in courtrooms, where business is conducted extremely professionally, diligently and without acrimony.

What I saw was a civilized and well-intentioned society working hard at maintaining the rule of law. Everyone does his best, and everyone understands what is going on, and knows how to do things right. The system may be cumbersome and inefficient, but the people in it, at all levels, are the salt of the earth.leave comment here Read more...

The Little People

By Madeleine Kando

I teach little people. Very little people. In fact, I don’t think they qualify as humans yet. They are more like puppies or kittens or cubs. They call me Miss Madeleine (since my hair turned grey I have graduated from a Ms. to a Miss, don’t ask me why) and when they call me ‘teacher’ I explain to them that I prefer to be called Miss Madeleine because they would not like it if I called them ‘girl’ instead of Mary or Jane or Agatha. But of course my puppies don’t understand that. They just obey because they see the frown on my face, not because of my argument.Well, of course they don’t understand. Puppies don’t understand anything do they? I have tried to see the world from the perspective of little people and realized that it takes an entire reversal of self.

Take their size for instance. I tried to go about my day on my knees once (that’s how high you reach if you are 4 years old). It is as if the world were chopped off from the waist up. All the stuff we find interesting and important in the world we usually don’t put on the floor but on tables, desks, shelves etc. The only thing that little people experience without being lifted up to our level are dirty shoes, old boxes, trash cans etc. No wonder they cannot wait to grow bigger.

And what about the volume of their voice? Tiny squeaks, most of them. Which they HAVE to amplify by screaming all the time. They have to compete with grown-up barritones just to be heard. And their poor little legs. You cannot blame a child for running around, bumping into things, breaking items, falling down all the time. They have to go the same distance to the park as mom, but their legs have to work a lot faster to get there.

Let’s not even start on the size of their brain. Granted it is relatively big compared to the rest of their apparatus, but still.. how do you expect a little puppy to understand what ‘recital’ means? Every June my little people have to do a ballet performance for their adoring parents. So I ask them: ‘Does anyone know what a recital is?’ 4 year old Samantha volunteers to share her knowledge and explains to the group with a patient tone of voice that a recital is when you don’t throw out garbage but recital it. Read more...

Why are we Always at War?

By Tom Kando

On May 21, President Obama and former Vice President Cheney had an exchange of speeches about our government’s approach to terrorism, including the use of torture. The two men’s positions are clear, and I don’t have to rehash them. I obviously agree with Obama. But this made me think of a more profound problem, namely that during most of my life, America has been in a near constant state of war.From 1940 to 2009, our country has been at war for 32 years, i.e. nearly half the time. This includes World War Two, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War and the Iraq-Afghan War. Plus, we had the Cold War for nearly half a century.

This is tragic. I call America’s history prior to 1917 the “Age of Innocence.” Except for the Civil War and a few minor skirmishes, our country’s focus was to avoid war, to avoid entanglements in world affairs (E.g. the Monroe Doctrine), to concentrate single-mindedly on forging a fantastic new society that was materially and spiritually more advanced than anything the world had ever seen. This was the age of splendid isolationism. The age of American exceptionalism. And by and large, it was a magnificent success. Sure, there was slavery, there was Manifest Destiny, there was Indian genocide. But the beauty is precisely that these came to an end (at great sacrifice to the American people, I might add). All in all, the American Project was the most noble effort in the world.

In 1917, America joined World War One. From then onward, it increasingly became the World Power. According to America’s detractors, this was the country's gain (an empire, exploiting the rest of the world). According to me, it is a terrible loss.
After World War One, isolationism was still kicking - briefly. We didn’t join the League of Nations. There were still those who felt that it was to America’s advantage to avoid foreign entanglements as much as possible.

But the die was cast. By the end of World War Two, our country was hopelessly entangled in every problem on the planet. It had assumed the mantle of world leadership. It had become responsible for everything on earth - the good, the bad and the ugly. The nightmare had begun.

Today, we live in a constant state of war. The tragedy is not so much financial (only a small fraction of our resources go to war), but psychological. In fact, America should be far more laid back and unafraid than Europe and the rest of the world: (1) We are still by far the most powerful country and (2) we are still blessed by geography, with two oceans surrounding us. Even in the age of ICBMs, we are much less vulnerable to attack, invasion, bombing and terrorism than are other parts of the world. Yet, we are told from morning till evening to be afraid, to be very afraid. We must be afraid of Iran, of North Korea, of Al Qaeda, of the Taliban, of other terrorist groups, etc. etc.

It seems that we must be afraid of someone, at all times. First we had to beat down the fascist onslaught. Great. No question about it, it had to be done. Then we had to beat Communism. Another success story. Now we have Islamofascism and the clash of civilizations.

Don’t misunderstand me: I am not denying that there are bad guys out there. But do we always have to obsess about some external foe, who is supposedly out to get us? When I travel overseas, I don’t sense that people are obsessing from morning till evening about terrorism (or during the fifties through the eighties, about communism). People live their lives and hope for the best. People don’t fret every day about imminent attack.

Luckily, most Americans don’t either (I hope). But the likes of Dick Cheney, and a great portion of the media, keep telling us that we should - “be afraid, be very afraid.” Psychologically, we are in a permanent state of war. Isn’t this terrible? Can’t we chill out a little?

If I am wrong, at least I’ll have lived a happy life until the terrorists/communists/hordes/pirates (take your pick) get me.leave comment here Read more...

America: The good, the bad and the beautiful

By Tom Kando

Let's not go overboard about America's warts. Let's not get carried away.

Political participation? There is no country on earth where people do more volunteer work for politics, more community service, more charity, more philantropy, more civic participation, than the US. De Tocqueville knew it, and it remains true today. America is practically the only country on earth where justice is dispensed by citizen juries (as I am doing right now) rather than by arbitrary and dictatorial judges.
Women and people of color elected to public office? I know of no country on earth where this happens more than here - starting with Obama and Hillary. Nowhere on earth are women closer to men in power and status than in America.

Okay, so there is a handful of (smallish) countries like Holland, New Zealand and Norway where some things are done better, including social legislation. Okay, so France has a better health care system. Every country has its strengths and its weaknesses. But overall, the US is still among the ten best places in the world to live, at least for the 270 million - 85% - majority that belongs to the middle class. A vast majority of Americans live pretty good, happy, comfortable lives.

An annual United Nations quality-of-life survey ranks the world's approximately two hundred countries, as measured by a composite scale that includes such indicators as crime rate, unemployment, income inequality, education, public health, human rights, the environment, traffic congestion, housing affordability, etc. According to this source,year after year, the best place in the world OVERALL has been Canada. Below that, the top ten countries change a bit from year to year, but they invariably include countries like New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland, Holland, France, Germany AND THE UNITED STATES. Japan is a bit lower, maybe #12 or so, you know why? Because the status of women still lags considerably behind that of men.

"Europe," whatever it is, also includes Portugal, Greece, Hungary, Serbia, Bosnia, Albania and dozens of other countries where things are DISMAL. Go see Naples next time you are in Europe. It's a cesspool worse than Detroit. Italian politics are FAR more corrupt than ours. Vast tracts of that country - Calabria, Sicily - are run by the Mafia. Are things better in Andalusia than in California? It would be absurd to claim that they are. And even in our beloved and oh-so-perfect France, would you want to live in the North Paris casbah?

Like Europe, America is a continent, and it is equally diverse: We have regions the size of France where the crime rate is lower than in Europe (E.g. the Dakotas, the upper Midwest, Minnesota, Iowa), regions the size of Sweden with very little poverty (greater San Diego, Honolulu, Utah).

Let's not even discuss the remaining 80% of the world - dictatorial rule from Russia to every other former Soviet country, from totalitarian China to Venezuela to Cuba, Mysogynistic Islamofascism ruling over a billion Muslims. Poverty starvation and pandemics from India to Africa to Latin America.

Any moderatelly informed person knows that America, imperfect as it is, remains one of the better places in the world. Tony Blair didn't coin the expression, but he quoted it, saying: People vote with their feet. For every American who leaves this country to live somewhere else, five thousand immigrants move TO America. And whereas most of these people now come from Third World countries like Mexico, there are still many Europeans who move here every year as well - certainly far more than Americans moving to Europe. Why is that?leave comment here Read more...

More Than Human

By Madeleine Kando

I remember this science fiction story as if I had read it yesterday. Theodore Sturgeon's novel is about a next generation human being that is made up of different individuals to make one 'super human'. A retarded boy with telepathic powers becomes the brain, two mute telekinetic twins become the body, and a retired army captain with amnesia becomes the conscience of this new being.This is the kind of leap that we, as a Western society need to make if we want to survive: joining forces with others to create a next generation consciousness which will solve a lot of our current problems. Think about it: our current financial, social and ideological problems stem from an overabundance of 'self'. I would even call it 'selfishness'. The economic crisis is a result of a financial system that puts the self and profit for the individual (or company or shareholder) above all else.

I see the man in shabby clothes driving to the supermarket, where he buys shabby food to feed his shabby family. His shabbiness is the price he pays for living in a society where rules are few, the sky is supposedly the limit and individual freedom is cherished above all. Nobody told this shabby man that the sky is the limit for the lucky few who have strong wings. For this shabby man, as for the majority of the flock, grazing the surface of the land is all that they will ever accomplish. The sky will always be a far-away unattainable goal. But others will not feel sorry for him. They will say: 'if you are shabby, it's your own doing. Get with the program or get out. It's not our fault that your wings are small and weak. You should have been more selfish and looked out for your own interests better.'

The irony is that with all its focus on private wealth, unfettered Capitalism has dug its own grave. The world is no longer capable of sustaining the selfish model. Too many people with too few resources. A 'More than Human' entity with the ability to pool its resources is the only option.

Social Democrats seem to be standing on a higher rung of the ladder towards the evolution of this 'more than human' super-being. They have accepted the fact that living your life to pursue things that are only good for the 'self' are ultimately going to bite you in the ass.

Some will argue that a more socialized economy would become "stagnant." That because of too many regulations the workforce would lack flexibility and adaptability. That the welfare state is "unsustainable" in a global economy. And that as our population ages we will become underproductive. But you only have to look at more ‘socialized’ societies to see that they are not stagnant, and that they often provide their citizens with a better quality of life. They work less hours so they can spend more time with family and friends. Societies based on the ‘self’ are doomed to fail. We can no longer afford to look out for just the individual and disregard the group.

As the protagonists of 'More Than Human' struggle to find out whether they are meant to help humanity or destroy it: will our society be able to give up its tradition of individualism and replace it with a mentality of belonging? Is Capitalism meant to survive or is it meant to destroy itself? Time will tell...
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'California Special' To Go (Down the Drain)

By Tom Kando

Polls predict that most of the six ballots measures on which we (at least some of us) will soon vote, will be rejected. Proposition 1F is the only one likely to pass. That’s the one which will punish elected officials, by denying them salary increases whenever the state budget has a deficit. Fine.Things are tough. The global economy is in the toilet. California is in some ways worse off than many other places. Our economic conditions are aggravated by the fact that we cannot govern ourselves. People are mad, and so they are going to vote against anything, no matter what. Or they won’t vote at all. Anger is the only thing people know. They blame politicians. Why not? You have to blame someone (although I prefer to direct my wrath at Wall Street, AIG, and corporate gangsters like Bernie Madoff).

Reminding the electorate that California’s problems are systemic and structural is like whistling in the wind. For one thing, we have this asinine two-third majority requirement. 47 of 50 states pass their budgets by simple majority, but California requires a super-majority. And most years that process doesn’t work. Additionally, California governs by referendum. Year after year, the electorate is asked to make momentous decisions. Without realizing the consequences, the electorate passes ballot measures such as prop 13 which freezes property taxes, prop 98 which freezes education funding, and so forth. And after decades of such thoughtlessness, the State has painted itself into a corner. Its legally mandated commitments far exceed its receipts, even during the best of times.

The problem is simple: the electorate wants to have its cake and eat it too. It wants all the services, but it doesn’t want to pay for them.

So, at the risk of re-stating the obvious, let me remind you why it would be good if the remaining propositions also passed on May 19: Because without them, the state deficit will be even larger, i.e. it will grow from $16 billion to $22 billion.

Without going into the details of Propositions 1A, 1B, 1C, 1D and 1E (check out http://www.voterguide.sos.ca.gov/ for a summary), let me sum up by saying that some of them would require a modest amount of “revenue enhancement.”

But the electorate has been brainwashed by America’s plutocracy (a.k.a. the Republican Party, Wall street, the Chamber of Commerce, the Business community) into knee-jerk opposition to ANY tax increases. An overwhelming majority of public opinion now agrees that when a state budget has a deficit, the solution must consist ENTIRELY of cuts in spending, NEVER of revenue enhancement.

But where is it written that our taxes are too high? Where is it written that a modest increase in taxes will hurt business? Have people compared the quality of life and of public services in low-tax countries and jurisdictions with those in countries and places with higher taxes?

On May 19, the electorate will take another giant step towards starving the beast (the state, the government). As a result, there will be a further deterioration in services (education, health care, corrections, law enforcement, transportation, etc.), more hardship for the millions who depend upon the state’s safety nets, a further decline in California’s overall quality of life.

I am sorry to have to tell you this, folks, but politicians aren’t the problem. You are. Keep it up. Soon California will be a Third World place similar to most countries south of the border.leave comment here Read more...

Is Barack Obama going to be a Lyndon Johnson?

By Tom Kando

I am worried about the Obama Presidency. Its foreign policy is endangering its economic policy. The latter should be the paramount concern. America is a sick baby. Depleted, exhausted, as the Dutch NRC Handelsblad describes us. President Obama has focused on the economy, of course, and his first 100 days have been great, BUT...But, there is this nagging problem - the Middle East - including the two wars inherited from the Bush Administration. Obama’s initial stance has been: (1) de-escalate our involvement in Iraq, and (2) escalate the war in Afghanistan. I already had a problem with that. But now, there is a 3rd country for which we are assuming increasing responsibility - (3) Pakistan!

I am aware of all the reasons given for continuing to fight, and to fight even more, in Afghanistan and in Pakistan: The Taliban are monsters, Pakistan has nukes, the world is a global village, if we don’t beat terrorism there, we won’t be safe at home, the world’s oil supply and commerce must be safeguarded, etc., etc.

But here are reasons for NOT continuing to fight those wars: (1) We will NEVER win. No one has ever won in Afghanistan, not Alexander the Great, not the British Empire, not the Soviet Union, not us. (2). There is token support from a few Europeans (for example, so far 19 Dutch soldiers have died in Afghanistan), but by and large the rest of the world doesn’t give a damn. We carry 95% of the burden. (3) America should not feel responsible for all the troubles of the world. Those countries are on the other side of the GLOBE, for crying out loud. We have drug wars on our own borders, spilling over into Texas and California, killing twenty times more people!

Here is a scary analogy: When Lyndon Johnson came to the Presidency in 1963, he was a good and promising man. His agenda was labeled the Great Society. This was a wonderful and progressive package of policies, including a War on Poverty, tremendous progress on the Civil Rights front, Medicare, aid to education, and much more.

And then, you know what happened? The Johnson Administration got bogged down and totally sidetracked in the Vietnam War. By 1969, the Great Society agenda was in tatters. Johnson had spent most of his presidency escalating and running the Vietnam war, influenced by the bad advice of his generals (William Westmoreland), and of his Secretary of Defense (Robert McNamara).

In 1969, President Johnson announced that he would not run for re-election, which was tantamount to an ignominious resignation and an admission that his presidency was a failure. The Great Society had been sacrificed to the Vietnam war, a war which was lost anyway. Was that stupid or what?

It’s too bad if the Taliban wants to take that part of the world back to the 5th century. Yes, they are monsters. Yes, what they do to women is monstrous. But we can’t prevent any of that. It’s too bad if we never capture Bin Laden. But we can’t.

We couldn’t win in Vietnam, and we certainly won’t win in Afghanistan, much less be able to control Pakistan (a country of 170 million people!). It would be nice if we could, but we don’t have the strength, the resources, the capability.

Let others, closer to the region, do what they can. Maybe India can play a role. Or some of the Middle Eastern countries. Or even the Europeans, who have a lot more at stake there.

President Obama: Please don’t become another Lyndon Johnson.leave comment here Read more...