Raiding the aid budget to pay for defence?

An interesting comment on the potential ripple effects of passporting DFID resources from development to peacekeeping:

"Campaigners point out that using the aid budget to pay for peacekeeping leaves the Ministry of Defence with more to spend on war."

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/02/problem-camerons-plan-raid-aid-budget-pay-defence

What do you think?

Shared from the Justice Matters Facebook Page

Lecture: Terrorism, National Security & Civil Liberties

The East Barnet Anglican-Methodist Partnership Annual Social Justice Lecture
"Terrorism, National Security and Civil Liberties"
Speaker: Lord Carlile of Berriew QC (former government advisor on anti-terrorism legislation)

Tuesday, 6th November 2012 - 7.30pm at Brookside Methodist Church, 2 Cat Hill, East Barnet EN4 8JB.

For further information, contact Revd Colin Smith.
020 8449 8386 / CASMITH1898@aol.com

The redemptive struggle to forgive

I found this article in today's Independent inspiring and challenging. What do you think? What would you have done in each of these situations?

"Eric Lomax, who died on Monday aged 93, was one of thousands of British soldiers taken prisoner by the Japanese in 1942 and forced to build the 418-mile railway to Burma. He was tortured until there was not a patch of unbruised skin between his shoulders and knees; 900 blows in six hours broke arms and ribs. At night he was confined to a cage coated in his own excrement.

Somehow he survived. But back in Scotland, Lomax was tormented for decades by nightmares. Post-traumatic stress led to estrangement from his father and the breakdown of his marriage. The mental scars refused to fade...

... Anger, hurt and bitterness is the commonest response to cruelty. It fuels sectarianism in Iran, resistance in Afghanistan and the blood feuds of Syria. Often it does not abate. When the killers of James Bulger were released, eight years after the murder, the dead toddler's mother said: "I never knew I had so much hate in me." Winnie Johnson, the mother of one of the victims of the Moors murderers, could not forgive for almost half a century until she died recently...

... Eric Lomax was different. He set out almost 50 years after the war to meet [his captor and tormentor], his heart filled with utter loathing and hate. But something extraordinary happened. "When we met, Nagase greeted me with a formal bow," he wrote on the website of the Forgiveness Project. "I took his hand and said in Japanese, 'Good morning, Mr Nagase, how are you?' He was trembling and crying, and he said over and over again: 'I am so sorry, so very sorry'. Lomax found himself saying: "We both survived."

Forgiveness turned to a friendship of nearly two decades."

From The ultimate heroism is forgiving the enemy - Comment - Voices - The Independent:

Failed States 2012

Failed states: An interesting infographic and 'postcards from hell'. Provocative reminders of a world in need of hope.

"If anything has become clear since we started publishing the Failed States Index in 2005, it’s that state failure is an entrenched problem -- one the world is far from figuring out how to fix. Every one of the 20 countries atop this year’s index has been there before: Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Iraq have never made it out of the top 10, and Somalia takes the unwanted No. 1 spot for the fifth straight year."

Read more: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/failedstates2012

Shared from the Justice Matters Facebook Page

The world I want to see

Last Wednesday, some of us went along to a panel discussion inspired by the forthcoming Rio+20 World Summit. The speakers - including Caroline Spelman MP, Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and the Rt Rev Peter Price, Bishop of Bath and Wells - were asked to speak on the subject of 'the world I want to see' and then engaged in a lively Q&A session. Sara, Lizzie and Sam were tweeting avidly, so you can find more by looking up the #FaithinRio hashtag on Twitter.

First to speak was Caroline Spelman MP, who began with a review of what has and hasn't been achieved since the original Rio World Summit in 1992:

"[The original Rio Earth Summit]was a turning point in the way the world looks at the links between the environment, development, and the economy. There has been progress on poverty alleviation, with significant improvements in access to water, education and healthcare in all regions of the world. Many businesses have embraced sustainability issues, and renewable energy has grown substantially.

Yet substantial challenges remain. Approx 1.4 billion people around the world still live in extreme poverty and those who were the poorest 20 years ago are still the poorest now. Environmental degradation continues, and sustainability has not been integrated fully into economic decision making."

Spelman highlighted that in just three year's time there will be an extra one billion mouths to feed. By 2030, DEFRA forecasts that water, food and energy will all be stressed. Each of these are potential flashpoints for conflict as well as sources of suffering. We do not have the luxury of time; we need Rio+20 to hasten change that benefits the most disadvantaged. But growth should be about more than just raising GDP, she said; well being and quality of life should also be indicators of success. For these reasons, the minister pledged that the UK would to push for a meaning set of sustainable development goals (SDGs) to be agreed in Rio.

DEFRA have posted her whole speech on their website, so you can read what she said in full if you are interested.

Next up was Steve Waygood of Aviva who spoke on the need for better corporate social responsibility within the global business community. He said that consumer power was an important way for the masses to shape the behaviours of the multinationals, but since

"90% of the data on business responsibility is missing [from public scrutiny]"

holding businesses to account and making informed investments is hard. To solve this, Aviva are leading a broad coalition of businesses and other stakeholders to pushing for corporate accountability and sustainability. At Rio+20 they will be seeking agreement on a transparency framework to that will reveal the true state of an organisation's corporate sustainability. As Waygood himself put it: 

"Corporations should deploy their vast resources to improve lives, not just profit margins. Paying tax is just the start."

Third in the line up was Nanette, a lady working with CAFOD in the Philippines. She spoke about the importance of meaningful collaboration between communities, local government and local church to effect sustainable development, identifying that:

"ordinary people, anointed leaders and elected leaders need to take on responsibility and accountability."

She was especially keen to stress that sustainable growth must be socially just; Rio+20 must not be about developed countries making decisions about developing countries without their say or involvement. In the same way, she argued that while the Green Economy held great promise for the development of underdeveloped parts of the world, to deliver change that benefits local communities and not just shareholders, those green technologies should be in the hands of local communities, not the multinational corporations.

The presentations closed with a rousing statement from the Bishop of Bath and Wells, who spoke with great passion, challenging Christians to stand against poverty, the arms trade and the military industrial complex. He encouraged those present not to fritter away their potential but rather to spend their lives doing something that changes the world. After all:

"We can't just have a concern for poverty," he said, "we have to act to end it."

Watch the Bishop's speech in full:

Throughout the presentations and the Q&A that followed, we were reminded that the impact of climate change is not a future problem; for many in the developing world it is a real problem today. It was clear that amid financial meltdown in Europe, ongoing conflict in the Middle East and political scandals at home, keeping sustainable global development and the ambitions of Rio+20 high on the public agenda is going to be a struggle. Struggle we must however, for as Caroline Spelman identified in her closing statement, the charge we have is to leave the planet in a better condition that we received it.

Blessed are the peace makers

Captain Kirk and the cult of just warfare

The thing about the original series of Star Trek is that, regardless which sector of the galaxy they were exploring, or which homogeneous planet they landed upon, it always ended in a scrap - usually between Captain Kirk and a bloke in fairly unconvincing make-up on an equally unconvincing set. Looking around at the current crop of summer blockbusters, its clear to see that this model - the good guy overcoming evil by force of arms - remains a central theme in our culture. From Bond to Batman, Iron Man to Avatar, the forces of good invariably prevail through a combination of righteous valour, luck and vastly superior weaponry.

Let’s face it: in our culture, good guys with guns are cool. Under fire and outgunned, they always prevail and the forces of evil - whether alien robots, international criminals or rogue scientists - are brought low.

This idea of heroic combat is not limited to the silver screen - in Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq and elsewhere we can see real men and women taking up arms to fight injustice. Just like in the movies, our media has painted a black and white world full of good guys and villains for us to cheer for and jeer at in turn. As a consequence of this narrative, in recent months we have seen Americans gleefully celebrating the assassination of Osama Bin Laden while NATO forces are bombing Libya for the protection of civilians. Indeed, we even find ourselves pondering whether assassinating Gaddafi isn’t perhaps the best way to end the stalemate and suffering in Libya?

Wrestling with pacifism

As a man, I have to admit that military hardware and martial heroes like Bond are strangely alluring. As a student of history, I am aware of many occasions when not standing up in the face of injustice would seem not to be not only counter-intuitive but unforgivably negligent. We need only think of the Second World War, or the Rwandan Genocide. However, the problem with this whole narrative of Just Warfare and martial heroism is that it lies in direct contradiction to Jesus’ teaching on peace and justice. As such I find myself wrestling with pacifism and increasingly identifying myself within that school.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus proclaims: “Blessed are the peace makers, for they shall be called Children of God.” (Matthew 5:9) It’s just one sentence among many now familiar and powerful phrases. Its quickly read and passed over, but it’s worth spending some time considering more closely.

Sermon on the Mount in context

The Sermon on the Mount was delivered in a context of imperial subjugation by Rome and domestic political unrest. There is some disagreement about how significant the Roman presence was in first century Palestine, but it is clear that Jerusalem - once a great centre of influence - was now little more than a backwater town on the fringes of civilisation. While some Jews were happy to keep their heads down and make do, others were less than satisfied with the status quo.

Banditry was common in hinterlands and border regions where government authority was ambiguous, where peasant gangs reacted to their lack of opportunities and influence by ransacking the homes of the wealthy out of spite. Often the leaders of these bandit gangs would portray themselves as a kind of royalty, wearing purple robes and stolen crowns - the Godfathers of Galilee.

Another group responded to Roman rule with

more organised insurrections. The most famous of these movements was the Zealots. The Zealots staged several violent revolts including one around 4 B.C. in Sepphoris, the Capital of the Galilee and home of the wealthy elite, only four kilometres from Nazareth. The revolt was crushed by the Romans; hundreds of people were crucified or sold into slavery. Since Nazareth was a thoroughly peasant village, it is likely that at least some Nazarenes were sympathetic to the revolt and perhaps even participants with the Zealots. This event would certainly have been a traumatic part of the collective memory of those listening to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.

A third brand of resistance was apocalyptic prophesy. Charismatic, prophetic individuals attracted followers by using symbolism from Jewish liberation history to preach the imminence of the restoration of Israel by divine action. One such prophet lead his followers from the wilderness to Jerusalem where he promised that by marching around the city, God would act on their behalf and overthrow the Roman occupation of Jerusalem. The prophet sought to re-enact the people of Israel's journey from slavery to freedom and Joshua's triumph over Jericho to provoke similar divine action on behalf of first-century Jews living under occupation.

Among the crowd it is possible that each of these types of people were represented and indeed most will have expected Jesus himself to fall into the final category - the apocalyptic prophet preaching doom to the Romans and puppet regime. However, the message that Jesus brought - blessed be the peacemakers - rejects violent action (whether by man or God) and challenges his listeners to embrace a different path.

In this teaching and others, Jesus challenges us all to adopt a response to conflict that is more constructive and ultimately more difficult than taking up arms. In his own life, he responded to persecution and violence with love and self-sacrifice that perplexed, frustrated and transformed the lives of his enemies (as well as costing him his own). We have convinced ourselves that fighting evil with force is a righteous response to injustice - that we are the good guys standing against the evils of the world, but we should remember that Jesus never said "Greater love has no man than this: to kill those who oppress others”.

A creative response to conflict

Responding to aggression with peace sounds mad, especially in light of the injustice we see on the news every day, but it is perhaps not as foolhardy as it first seems. The illusionist Derren Brown - a man with a particular insight into the human character - tells an interesting story in which he confounded a violent aggressor.

"A couple of years ago I was walking back from a hotel at three in the morning. A guy came up to me looking for a fight. Rather than playing the authority game he was trying to set up, I said to him 'the wall outside my house is four foot high' to confuse him. His eyes glazed over and all the adrenaline left him. He was still on the verge of hitting me but then I said 'but when I was in Spain, the walls were really, really low.'

"What I did induced a state of complete confusion and in that state you're desperate for something to make sense so that you come out of it. He burst into tears and I ended up giving him advice on how to cope with his girlfriend - they'd had a fight."

Now I’m not arguing that Derren Brown is a perfect role model, but this story illustrates that when Jesus promotes a non-violent path, it doesn’t mean we have to tolerate violence or to ignore it, but rather we should find ways to respond to it creatively.

Peace

Whatever our intention, however well meaning we may be, we cannot make peace through conflict. At best, tensions are suppressed, but they remain unresolved, waiting. Ultimately, even the best intentioned violence only ever leads to more violence.

However, not doing anything is no a response either. Well meaning words and platitudes are equally unhelpful - especially to those suffering. As the Derren Brown story illustrates, to be true peace makers is to embrace our creativity and confound evil with love.

The United Nations

Last summer, Victoria and I visited the UN in New York. Throughout the building are provocative quotes and statistics about the state of the world and the work of the UN. One of the quotes that stood out was from Eleanor Roosevelt, who said: “It isn’t enough to talk about peace. One must believe it. And it isn’t enough to believe in it. One must work at it.” Another observed that “Like war, peace must be waged.”

In light of these rousing statements, it was distressing to learn that the total annual UN peace keeping budget is less than 0.5% of all global military expenditure.

It was former American President and General Dwight D Eisenhower who lamented the rise of military spending at the expense of tackling injustice in more creative ways. In his final speech as president he reminded the world that: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in a final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed – those who are cold and not clothed.”

Eisenhower was right that there are better things to spend our resources on that weapons or war, better ways to bring justice than with the sword and semi-automatic. Spending more on peace keeping isn’t the answer however, since it still conforms to the idea of meeting violence with violence, or at least the threat of violence.

No, the role Jesus challenges us to embrace is not that of peace keepers, but peace makers - an active, creative posture. But what on earth does that mean? How do we rise to this challenge? Must we wander into conflict zones with face paints and footballs?

Life as it should be

The truth is that we can be peace makers wherever we are. Although so far we have been considering peace in terms of the absence of armed conflict, the Hebrew word for peace - SHALOM - is not limited in this way, but rather refers to things being ‘as they should be’. As Radiohead might put it, peace, shalom, means everything in its right place.

This is not a new commission that Jesus presents to his audience. Being peace makers - shalom makers - was a role that God entrusted to Adam when he charged him to tend the Garden of Eden in Genesis. Being a good steward of creation is to cultivate Shalom - to bring harmony, balance. Later in Genesis, Abraham and his family were charged with modelling Shalom - life as it should be - to the nations.

In light of this legacy, Jesus’ encouragement to be peace makers becomes more accessible - if still challenging. To be a peace maker is to bring shalom, which means to bring healing and wholeness, to lives, people, the world. To bring shalom means deliberately looking for the shattered, the hungry, the lost, the down-trodden, and to act in such a way as to bring change.... to feed, to liberate, to raise up. Therefore, when Jesus calls us to be "peacemakers," He is calling us to be the ones to bring healing and wholeness to a broken world.

Justice Matters

Being a peace maker therefore is to do more than talk the talk. But where to start?

Since January this year a small group of friends have been gathering in coffee shops and homes around Finchley to wrestle with this very question. Out of this small gathering of activists, optimists and ordinary radicals has grown Justice Matters - a new community for people seeking to make a difference, an effort to start doing something - however small our individual contributions may be.

Justice Matters held its first public gathering before the summer. We had 25 people join us to

discuss the social justice issues close to their heart - from poverty to sexual violence against women, water and sanitation to political oppression. The theme of the evening - aside from being an opportunity to meet some like-minded people - was to encourage one another that our individual efforts to be peace makers are not lone acts of delusional hope in an ocean of darkness, but rather form vibrant sparks in an incandescent network of shalom bringers. Together we can - together we are - making a difference.

Making even the slightest dent into these global problems may seem impossible, but the worst thing we can do is not act because the task seems too great. Even one step for the better is worth taking: Every hungry person fed and watered, every woman rescued from sex trafficking, every older person granted dignity, every tribesman given economic independence, every child immunised against a preventable disease - each of these is a victory for shalom.

When he calls us to be peace makers, Jesus reminds us that the Kingdom of God is more than well-meant words and a warm glow inside. Rather it is a call to action. In the Church we can be guilty of thinking that praying against injustice is enough. Certainly, prayer is vital - we cannot achieve real change in our own strength, but as Shane Claiborne writes in the book Follow Me to Freedom:

“When we pray for the hungry, let’s remember to feed them. When we pray for the unborn, let’s welcome single mothers and adopt abandoned children. When we give thanks for creation, let’s plant a garden and buy locally grown fruit and vegetables. When we remember the poor, let’s reinvest our money in micro-lending programs. When we pray for peace, let’s beat our swords into ploughshares and turn military budgets into programs of social uplift. When we pray for an end to crime, let’s visit those in prison. When we pray for lost souls, let’s be gracious to the souls who’ve done us wrong.”

 

Don't worry if you feel small and that you have only a little to give. As the environmental activist Julia Butterfly Hill says: “The question is not, ‘Can you make a difference?’ You already do make a difference. It’s just a question of what kind of difference you want to make."