There is a long critique of economics that looks at the value-free way it totals product, expenditure and income. If I buy, it is expenditure, but if I do unpaid (make a cup of coffee, build a house or help a child grow up) it is economically invisible in most analyses.

More than this we buy “goods”, but lots of them are bads or indifferents for those consumers and perhaps for all consumers – foods, drugs, addictive goods and activities, damaging or dangerous products and activities which spoil relationships or lifestyles. They add to GDP, but really reduce our standard of living. It is not difficult to come up with a list comprising perhaps a fifth of all expenditure of things which are bad, or not good for, the people who buy them.Clearly, this is vastly important to real economics.

We look at, perhaps, the biggest failure of see straight of all value-free economics – the world military system. Let us look at its “value-free” size. Something like $1.7 trillion is directly spent on the military world-wide each year.

But, more than this, perhaps 10% of all government expenditure is gathered around security, espionage, defence, international tensions and the business related to the military. So, for example, the CIA, the Department of Homeland Security, NASA, the Nuclear Research Agencies, etc are not in the US military budget, and other military budgets must be similarly understated around the world. If world GDP is £83 trillion and Government Expenditure Worldwide is 17%, this extra is $1.4 trillion.

Next we take into account the damage caused by wars and attacks in any year through killing, injury, damage to property, infrastructure, resources and other economic valuables. It is difficult even to guess this. During the World Wars it might have been as high as 20-30% as vast areas were destroyed and dragged back in economic development. Other periods have higher and lower levels of damage and destruction. If we bear in mind that killing a young person takes out perhaps a $1 million of work earnings, these calculations are vast. At a very conservative estimate we could say this figure is 3-5% of GDP.

There are other less tangible figures, like the trading and economic development loss vcaused by militarism and wars, the costs of military and war generation of CO2, perhaps 5% of all CO2 generation, but we exclude these. Overall the costs of these bads are some 6.5% of World GDP, or $5.4 trillion a year – more than the economies of the UK and India together each year.

World disarmament, getting rid of all these costs, and the chronic negative impacts on people’s lives and lands, would be the biggest conceivable benefit to the world economy. We could spend the economies of India and the UK on all kinds of good things. This shows the stupidity of militarism, banging our collective heads against exploding devices, and the eminently sensible route of multilateral world disarmament, MWD.

Of course, those who sell weapons want to hide this reality, so that we can continue attacking and frightening one another, but soon the victims will see through the crack in their visors and start shaking hands with their putative enemies, because spending $1.7 trillion annually on destruction, even if it adds to GDP, is dumb in any language.

This is a request you sign a petition, but more, it shares a strategy and understanding you may want to own. The points are not new, but putting them on the table together points the way ahead. It’s about addressing the world-wide military situation, something we rarely dare think about, but should. If a thousand or so of us share this strategic understanding and articulate it well before 11/11/2018, things might change quite radically. The points are not original or difficult to agree with.

1. MILITARISM IS GROWING. World military spending is now some 70% higher than at the end of the Cold War and looks to increase further. Sophisticated arms industries in the US, UK, Russia, France, China, Japan and other states are expanding and supplying most countries with lethal arrays of weapons. Companies push their wares avidly.

2. THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX IS INSIDE GOVERNMENT. The military and arms companies are (undemocratically) inside most governments, especially the heavily armed members of the UN Security Council. The military-industrial complex is in political control, and shapes most of the media with scares, distrust, nationalist themes and rumours of wars.

3. ARMS ARE THE PROBLEM, NOT THE SOLUTION. THEY CAUSE MOST WARS. Arms, not territorial gain, cause most wars. WW1 was precipitated by four arms races. Arms pressure in the 1920s and 30s opened the way for Hitler. The flooding of the Middle East with arms (for oil) has made much of it into an area of failed, war-ridden states. Both Iraq Wars were caused by arms. ISIS was founded on looted western arms. If nothing is done, arms sales and macho politics will cause more wars, deaths and devastation. Refugees (50-70M now) and dire poverty will be even more serious and insoluble. Big power confrontations would destroy much of the world.

4. MILITARISM IS THE BIGGEST FAILED EXPERIMENT ON THE PLANET. It has caused 200 million deaths this last century and wasted perhaps 10-20% of all economic activity on the planet. Most people, given space to reflect, know wars and arming do not work especially if they have direct experience of war. All sides lose wars. All States waste through militarism. The power to destroy is no power at all to thinking people. All countries, except the US, have a policy of internal disarmament because it is safer. In an inter-dependent world, militarism is tragically stupid. Weapons have shot their bolt.

5. MOST OF THE WORLD’S POPULATION IS FOR PEACE AND DISARMAMENT, were they not frightened by the militarists and told peace is not practical. Vast industries of fear, east and west, keep this fragile militarism in place, when the old nationalist and patriotic idea of enemy is merely a myth for the military. In November 2018 they will reflect on the War to End all Wars and the possibility of peace. Football across no man’s land is now much more sensible than going back to the trenches.

6. FULL WORLD MULTILATERAL DISARMAMENT – ARMING DOWN – IS EASIER AND MORE PRACTICAL THAN ARMING UP. If all nations disarm together, threats, dangers, costs and damage fall for all, and no-one needs “defence”. A clear proposal for decreasing military spending accepted by all states makes eminent sense for all, except the militarists. It needs backing by open and required inspection, a (decreasing) UN police force and a subsidized end to arms production. War and destruction are impractical, and most of the defence arguments are myths, hiding the fact that aggression does not work. The idea that wars are won is idealised. Deliberate world-wide disarmament is not difficult if the major powers back it together and work with the United Nations.

7. THE MILITARY MUST NOT BE IN CHARGE. Disarmament was proposed seriously in 1899, 1907, 1918, 1932 and the 1960s, but never actually tried, because the military-industrial complex sabotaged it and dominated political leadership. Especially in the 1932 Geneva Disarmament Conference the military establishment and arms company agents stopped President Hoover’s radical disarmament plan. Turkeys do not vote for Christmas. The military-industrial complex will try every which way to stop disarmament. Disarmament will be a fight against them, but not to kill and maim. Similarly, the militarists cannot be in charge of implementing it; They will create problems to break it down, though they owe it to their soldiers not to. Reliable political control of the military is a necessity.

8. THE ROUTE TO WORLD MULTILATERAL DISARMAMENT, SIDE-STEPPING MILITARY CONTROL, IS POPULAR WORLD-WIDE DEMOCRATIC PETITIONS. Not “petitions” in the sense, “we beg you”, but petitions in the sense, “We the undersigned insists this should happen.” We go round military control of the system. These petitions can grow in every nation, east and west, and we, the little people, can say, “This is where we stand – disarmament for everybody.” There will be problems with military dictators, superpowers, fearmongers and terrorists, but these problems are far smaller than weapons and war, and can be handled under the rule of law. So world multilateral disarmament and peace must be made, and we can make it, as Jesus suggested. Faith can move mountains, even the one of world militarism.

9. NOVEMBER 2019 IS A CRUCIAL TIME. The First World War was to be the War To End All Wars, and Disarmament for All was built into the Treaty of Versailles. It was frozen out by the military-industrial establishments and not tried, opening the way for Hitler. Now is the time to learn the deep lesson of this Pointless War and disarm the nations. We, little people, have to do it and you, in your own way, with your friends and contacts, are invited to take it on by word and action. You are invited to sign this proposal to the UK Government, pass it on and undertake your own initiatives.

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/226728

It needs to be 10,000 or 100,000 by the beginning of November to start the process with some élan. We can, one by one, help disarm the world and make peace.

In November this year – the centenary of the end of the Great War – much of the world’s population will be wondering why WW1 was not the “War to end all Wars”. They will probably not hear an answer. Many will be cynical of the very idea. Actually, the policy understood in 1918 by most of the people and world’s statesmen has been pushed off the road of human history, trashed and buried without trace in the national consciousness. It was Multilateral Disarmament and built into the Treaty of Versailles. Germany immediately, but then all nations, were to disarm to secure the end of war and worldwide peace.

Hear some of the world’s leaders on the problem. Here is Lord Grey of Fallodon, British Foreign Secretary for the decade leading into the War, and at the centre of all that was going on. ”The moral is obvious; it is that great armaments lead inevitably to war. There are armaments on one side, there must be armaments on other sides…” He carries on, “But although all this be true, it is not in my opinion the real and final account of the origin of the Great War. The enormous growth in armaments in Europe, the sense of insecurity and fear caused by them – it was these that made war inevitable. This, it seems to me, is the truest reading of history, and the lesson that the present should be learning from the past in the interests of future peace, the waring to be handed on to those who come after us.” Lloyd George came to a similar conclusion.

Even the leading military staff saw the problem and the answer. Field Marshall Sir William Robertson, or Wully to his friends… “I prefer to believe that the majority of people in the world in these days think that war hurts everybody, benefits nobody – except the profiteers – and settles nothing…. As one who has passed pretty well half a century in the study and practice of war, I suggest to you that you should give your support to Disarmament and so do your best to ensure the promotion of peace.” Admiral Lord Wymess: “The evil is intensified by the existence of international armaments rings, the members of which notoriously play into each others’ hands. So long as this subterranean conspiracy against peace is allowed to continue the possibility of any serious concerted reduction of armaments will be remote.” Lord Trenchard, Chief of Air Staff 1919-29 while in post, talking about Multilateral Disarmament: “if I had the casting vote, I would say abolish the Air. I feel that it is an infinitely more harmful weapon of war than any other.” These military men obviously saw World Disarmament as the necessary way ahead.

There were others who had already seen the tragedy that the Great War would bring. With almost prophetic insight, Gladstone saw the way British naval aggrandisement would lead to a great European War. Keir Hardie led the Labour Party with a keen sense of how militarism was pushing Europe to the edge and over it. He desperately trying to prevent the War. Pope Benedict clearly signalled in 1914 the catastrophe the War would bring. Leo Tolstoy railed at the stupidity of spending millions on fighting, as if mass murder was more justified than a single murder. Then those who fought saw war as it was, and poets, artists or ordinary injured soldiers vowed that war should end and those who made the instruments of war should be put out of work and profits.

The American President, Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points Speech was made early in 1918. (and largely ignored in the media in January). After the War, it was built into the Treaty of Versailles. It spoke against secret treaties, indeed the need for any treaties, and armed alliances. It was based on reducing arms to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety, effectively to a policing level. Lenin hoped for this outcome in the war-torn USSR. The people, from king to paupers, looked for Disarmament as the end to War.

They were not proved wrong, but the militarists and war people slipped this policy off the agenda. In the States vast profits had been made out of arms, and the Du Ponts and others made sure that the ailing Wilson’s policy of disarmament would not be tried and quit the League of Nations. Military distrust and hanging on to weapons defeated the disarmament move, not by argument, but by burying the issue in vagueness until 1932 when it was defeated, again through private cabals and, as Noel-Baker who witnessed it argues, the arms companies’ agents. Multilateral Disarmament has been buried, because it is too dangerous for the military-industrial establishments in charge from the late 19th century until now. It brings world peace but the horrific possibility that the merchants of death will sell nothing. It is time now to try swords into ploughshares properly, without the military in charge.

There is a concerted campaign to smear Corbyn with anti-Semitism. here are some source materials to 2014 and the Commons Debate on recognising both the State of Israel and the State of Palestine.

Jack Straw
A moment’s thought will allow us to appreciate just how ill-founded the Government of Israel’s assertion is. Israel has been occupying Palestinian land for nearly 50 years. It fails to meet its clear international legal obligations as an occupying power. In the last 20 years, as we have heard, it has compounded that failure by a deliberate decision to annex Palestinian land and to build Israeli settlements on that land. There are now 600,000 such Israeli settlers in East Jerusalem and the west bank. The Israelis are seeking to strangle East Jerusalem by expropriating land all around it, and two months ago, they announced the illegal annexation of a further nearly 1,000 acres of land near Bethlehem. The Israeli Government will go on doing this as long as they pay no price for their obduracy. Their illegal occupation of land is condemned by this Government in strong terms, but no action follows. The Israelis sell produce from these illegal settlements in Palestine as if they were made or grown in Israel, but no action follows.

Israel itself was established and recognised by unilateral act. The Palestinians had no say whatever over the recognition of the state of Israel, still less a veto. I support the state of Israel. I would have supported it at the end of the 1940s. But it cannot lie in the mouth of the Israeli Government, of all Governments, to say that they should have a veto over a state of Palestine, when for absolutely certain the Palestinians had no say whatever over the establishment of the state of Israel.

Today’s debate will, I hope, send a strong signal that the British Parliament stands full square behind the two-state solution set out in the road map. The current impasse can be broken, in my view, only by actions, not simply by words, and the recognition of Palestine by the international community would further, not hinder, these aims.

Sir Gerard Kaufmann
There are 6 million Israeli Jews. There are 1,600,000 Palestinians in Israel, 2,700,000 on the west bank and 1,800,000 in Gaza. The Palestinians now outnumber the Israeli Jews, and that is without taking into account the 5 million Palestinians in refugee camps and in the diaspora. The big difference, of course, is that the Israelis have a secure state and the Palestinians live under oppression day after day.

The right hon. and learned Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) wove a fantasy that the Jews were reunited when the state of Israel was created and that the Palestinians were split, and we have just heard again about the wickedness of Hamas—I do not condone what Hamas does, and I realise that it is a useful tool for those who wish to portray the Palestinians as divided and unreliable. His fantasy was that all was harmonious when Israel was created, but the Israelis were divided into three warring factions at that time: the Haganah, representing the official Jewish agency; the terrorist organisation Irgun Zvai Leumi; and the terrorist Stern gang. Israel nearly broke out into civil war immediately after it was founded because Irgun insisted on having its own army in an independent state, so the idea that Israel was somehow born in a moment of paradise and that all that surrounds the Palestinians is stress and damage is a fantasy.

Where are we now? The situation was not ideal for Israel then, and it is not ideal for the Palestinians now, but divided Israel survived and survives even though it is still divided. Look at the amazing divisions in the Israeli Government, with the extraordinary extremism of the Yisrael Beiteinu party, which makes the UK Independence party look like cosy internationalists, yet it is part of the Government.

The Israelis are harming the Palestinians day after day. Last week the US State Department denounced a settlement expansion of 2,600 that the Israelis are planning. Last week the new president of the New Israel Fund, Talia Sasson—Jewish and pro-Israel—denounced the expansion of settlements again in the west bank. The Israelis, with the checkpoints, the illegal wall and the settlements, are making a coherent Palestinian state impossible.

It is essential to pass this motion, because it would be a game changer. The recognition of Palestine by the British House of Commons would affect the international situation. This House can create a historic new situation. I call on right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House to give the Palestinians their rights and show the Israelis that they cannot suppress another people all the time. It is not Jewish for the Israelis to do that. They are harming the image of Judaism, and terrible outbreaks of anti-Semitism are taking place. I want to see an end to anti-Semitism, and I want to see a Palestinian state.​

Jeremy Corbyn

I thank the Minister for what he has said so far. During his discussions, was there at any point a serious debate about the problem of the lives faced by many Palestinian refugees in camps in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and other places? They too must surely be part of a long-term peace equation. They have spent more than 60 years in those camps, and it cannot go on for ever like that.

This is how the House of Commons voted:

Resolved: 274 in favour and 12 against
That this House believes that the Government should recognise the state of Palestine alongside the state of Israel, as a contribution to securing a negotiated two state solution.

The Palestinian representative to the UK, Manuel Hassassian was heartened by the debate and result, and was criticised by Zionists. Corbyn’s response to them was”One is they don’t want to study history, and secondly, having lived in this country for a very long time, probably all their lives, they don’t understand English irony either.” To make this into an accusation of anti-Semitism is malignant, and part of a potent distraction from the wrongs committed by the Israelis against the Palestinians as described in the debate. (Sir Gerard Kaufman was a Jew)

Later the PM was asked
Q7. The Palestinian ambassador, Mr Hassassian, has described Monday’s vote on the recognition of the Palestinian state as “a momentous vote”. Indeed it was. He has also said:“Now is the time for the UK government to listen to its democratically elected parliament and to take decisive political action by recognising the State of Palestine and upholding its historical, moral and legal responsibility towards Palestine”.Does the Prime Minister agree? [905381]

The Prime Minister, David Cameron

“Of course, I look forward to the day when Britain will recognise the state of Palestine, but it should be part of the negotiations that bring about a two-state solution. That is what we all want to see—a state of Israel living happily and peacefully alongside a state of Palestine—and that is when we should do the recognition.”

Cameron thus ducked the vote, and avoided recognition of the Palestinian State.

Corbyn as a supporter of recognising both the states of Israel and Palestine is being attacked by those who want the issue of oppression to Palestinian oppression to disappear. This is why the accusations of anti-Semitism against Corbyn appear like the drip of a leaky tap.

US is involved in Tariff War with China and aggressive deals with others.
US has substantial long-term trade deficits, so that China and Japan have come to own a lot of US assets.There is an accumulated Current Account Deficit of $3 trillion in the last three decades.
If China loses US markets, if will market strongly in other parts of the world, usually with price advantages.
US Federal Budget is in deep deficit. If the Federal Government is to raise money domestically interest rates will have to rise.
There is long-term pressure on the $ to fall.
World-wide liquid funds can send currencies moving fast.
China has about $1 trillion in US Government Securities. If the $ falls, it loses, and loses trade advantages as well, but it has discretion in that market.
The $ is the main world reserve currency, which gives the US a seigniorage bonus, but it is declining in that role. The Euro and Chinese yuan are also widely used and there could be a more sudden move out of the $.
Trump is declaring trade War on Iran and others, using US market clout. Immediately it may work, but many will learn to do without the US. Iran will sell its oil.
Costs of global warming are increasing world wide.
The rich move their money fast when they will lose out through currency moves. They have holdings in tax havens of perhaps £20 trillion; this may stabilize or destabilize the $.
Disparities of wealth and income across the world make much of the population living precariously and predispose to recessions, because the rich spend less of their income.
The US has spent and will spend several $ trillion on wars and the military. Useless burden.
The 1917 fall in the $ did not help its trade position much immediately.

In the light of these the $ looks weak. A fall creates more problems than it solves for a couple of years – higher costs, difficult Federal Govt funding, etc. There could be trouble ahead.

Art Exhibition: God’s Creativity and ours.
Coton Village Hall, Parish Room, Church and Churchyard
Sunday, 20th May, 10.00-5-00
Alan Storkey.

The complex language of creation
We see each day and breathe each hour.
We artists get above our station.
Time to paint Your Creative power.

We Cambridge people think things through a bit,

While you make light of light and then switch off.

So photons travel 60 trillion miles,

without much fuel, nearly straight ahead,

while we are merely going round the Sun.

They thread a needle’s eye but are diffuse,

And seem to be quite light, and do not fight.

They give us paintings, colours, tone and line,

and, subtle, bounce some six or seven times.

So did this all evolve, our retinas

from sense cells formed in early slime?

No, this exquisite universe alight,

Was made before the animate was born,

before all eyes had ever come to form.

My dear Donald,

Could I just say that you are a wonderful President and are leading the Great United States of America to a new wonderful future and are making decisive decisions every day and are the great world leader of our time. At this point, rather than having my letter read to you, you might like to read it directly yourself word by word, because I have a few things to discuss privately. Thank you.

First, can I say in short words that we do not like you to say that our health service is not doing well. I have checked your exact words, and you say that our system is “going broke and not working”. I need to say that is not good enough, when I am trying to say the opposite. People are supposed to be nice to their friends, so that when they need them, they support them in turn. I could criticize you and say that I think your wall is silly, not that I do – it is a wonderful wall, or it will be when it is eventually built, but we do not do that to our friends.

In England we have an old English word called “etiquette”. It means you smooth your skirt when you sit down and hold your tea cup nicely. Etiquette says there are a lot of things that are not done and rubbishing your friends is one of them, or rather NOT rubbishing your friends. Can I say I do not expect any more of the things I am doing over here to be rubbished across the world. It Is Not Done, IIND for short. Keep saying IIND to yourself when you talk about Britain.

So, for example, I could say the US Stock Market is going broke and is not working, after yesterday’s slump, but IIND, because it would not be supporting you as world leader and might make things difficult for you, and because you are a great businessman and build good towers called Trump Towers.

By the way, if I may, did you like the bricks I sent you? I hope your wife liked the shoes. You can play with the bricks on your desk. The letters on the side say, “Trump Tower”, and they are on all sides of the brick so that it does not matter which way round you put them, though you must not get them upside down, something it is easy to do in politics. Because you have to start at the bottom, (or at least the proletariat does. ha ha ha) you have to put the bricks on in the order R E W O T P M U R T and then when you stand back it spells TRUMP TOWER downwards. I know you like things which stick up and it may take your mind off other things like wockets. Sorry I mentioned them.

We are still working on your visit. The Queen has suggested you might like to go to Balmoral, which is her castle in the North. That way you can visit your golf course, we can arrange a rapturous welcome, you could kill a few stags and have the great English delicacy called Haggis. I will send over a kilt for you to wear and although your fans all over Britain will not see much of you, it will be a royal occasion – If the Queen is well enough to attend. At present she has a nasty persistent cough. You mentioned you quite liked the idea of being king of the GUSA, and you will be able to discuss that with the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Philip who never quite made it. Ha. Ha. Ha. Do not mention to the Queen that you like her job or want your head on our stamps.

I am looking forward to seeing you again. I do not have much excitement over here and it is nice having a closest ally. Next time we meet we could discuss possible enemies, your brick tower and I will not mention the Russians. Oops. Thank you for getting Teresa right. I like to be three syllables.

Theresa May
United Kingdom (British) Prime Minister.