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What would be the best use for the trillion dollars a year spent by the United States and other countries on their military budgets? by Howard Zinn |
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Currently video only.
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by Bianca Jagger | 0 votes | 
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Bianca Jagger: Answertext will be available soon. |
Bill Joy: Rather than fighting wars and preparing to fight wars the best thing to do would be to invest in eliminating the underlying causes of conflict starting with raising up a lot of poverty, investing in economic development and in education. The difficulty in making such a change is not that the money wouldn’t thus be better spent but that the people who would profit from those kinds of changes are not the same people who profit from spending on the military. So for example in the middle east to really address that conflict which may take a generation we’d have to do something like substantial investments in economic development for the Palestinians and other displaced people and people who’s economies such as the people in Lebanon have been devastated by the recent conflict. Those who are in power, whether it’s economic in power in the west making weapons, or it’s dictators and politically maintaining their power in the middle east through focus on military activity and the nationalism it engenders, it’s only through taking a long term view that by investing in peace, by investing in education, by investing in progress that we can hope to draw down the incredible expenditure of military, on the military in this century. by Bill Joy |
Bora Cosic: Nowise! There in the current system there will be always an argument for savaging huge amounts of the money on weapons. If it were not so then off course this fortune could be spend on the science, on the healthcare, on saving of the environment or general development which is growing very slow for the aggressive militant politics of a lot of governments. by Bora Cosic |
Brian J. Weller: Yeah, okay. All right. Reverse global warming. Make a difference around climate change. The Plan B program. I think it’s estimated around $160-odd billion dollars would make a huge difference in terms of reversing some of the terrible trends in terms of climate change. So, what else? Stopping species’ extinction by massive investment in education sustainability. Some of the ways I’d invest that money. Re-empower the United Nations to end world poverty through economical localization strategies. That would be a great start. We could also use some of that money for a truly global peace campaign and really build a world around dialogue around the world that we truly want. That’s what this is about; Dropping Knowledge and this first event here in Berlin today on the 9th of September 2006. In my feeling, this needs to happen more and more and more. We need to have this kind of event happening everywhere around the world; the center of every town and city. We could put a fund together out of the trillion dollars to record the global dialogue. I think Dropping Knowledge is doing a great thing here. So yeah, a trillion dollars, my God! Reverse climate change, if we can; end world poverty and hunger; stop species’ extinction; end violence. What a great use of the money. To do that, we need a more enlightened leadership and we certainly do not have that. We need a change of leadership. We need a change of consciousness that’s for sure. |
Catherine David: There are thousands of possibilities as we can spent the money on the health care system and on the education system to satisfy in this way the needs of the poorest. But thats a naive way to ask this question and my question is: Who will pay the trillions of dollars the United States are not able to pay for war in Iraq? Who will pay these trillions of dollars? |
China Keitetsi: It would do a lot of good. As we know, the environment in our world is getting worse. People are cutting down trees to cook food. This money could give electricity to African villages, to Asian villages, to poor countries which are developing now. And as you know many Africans, many Asians, many poor people from developing countries are running away from their countries and many are being sunk with the boats in the waters of Spain, the waters of Australia, trying to run away from their countries to immigrate to Europe, to immigrate to America. The question is why? I think because they think they will get a better life, they think they will get a better job. Yes, of course, because every human being wishes to have such a life. If that money could be used to build factories, to create jobs for these people, believe me, we will have less death in the waters of Spain. We will have less immigration coming to Europe. We'll have less Africans and less Asians trying to run away from their country to come and get a better life here. This money could do a lot of good. This money could buy medicine for malaria. This money could buy ambulances for poor people who can't even go to hospital; who can't afford medicine. This money could save so many babies, because as you know in many countries in Africa or in Asia, women give birth in the villages. Women give birth on the side of the road because there is no ambulance to take them to the hospital. I think this should be a shame for us to spend so much money on stupid military buildup. For what? When we human can discuss as we are sitting on this roundtable today, why do we spend so much money in weapon and let mothers die and children die when we can help? |
Constantin von Barloewen: This is the core question in the world. You know the statistics of the institute on peace researches in Stockholm which prove that after 1989 when it was a time to hope that in a world political context the expenses for military budgets would go down, in fact in the last years the military expenses worldwide have increased dramatically. The leading nation here is the United States, but as well Russia, France, Germany, and England are in leading positions. Regrettably nowadays the corrupt leaders in military and political leaders in the Third World countries do enrich themselves from the military conflicts, from ethnical wars, i.e. that in Chad a short while ago a world bank credit was stopped because the military leaders did not spend the money for social needs and education, but for buying military products. Just think about India nowadays being the biggest customer worldwide for military weapons among the Third World countries, on the one hand operating scientific space projects or using nuclear power, at the same time having 47 % of the population suffering from hunger, being undernourished, and one third is living under the minimum living wage in India, that is millions of people. It is absurd, the military budgets should be reduced and the money spent on social and humanitarian needs and on education. In fact the contrary proves to be true, especially in the last few years where Third World countries like Africa, corrupt regimes buy extensively military products from the West, and the Western states, Russia as well, are happy to secure selling markets in the Third World, wheter it is Africa, South America or Asia. This is regrettable, but an empiric fact. |
Cornel West: Howard Zinn is my dear brother; he is one of the towering public intellectuals in America. It’s a delight and a joy for his voice to be present at this historic gathering. The best use for the trillions of dollars spent by the United States ought to be used for education, healthcare, job care, produce more jobs with a living wage, protect the environment. These are just not clichés and chivalrous, but these are policies that affect concrete human beings in their everyday lives and the kind of warped priorities now exercised by the U.S. government and other governments that tilt toward military expenditure rather than investing in infrastructure and education and the healthcare and employment. It is, in fact, a moral failure and political catastrophe that will haunt us for years and decades to come; and I think my dear brother Howard Zinn’s question has everything to do with why it is that democratic globalization from below as opposed to corporate globalization from above is crucial and necessary. My dear brother Michael Harrington in his last work called “Socialism Past and Future,” and by socialism he meant deep democratic empowerment of everyday people, that his book still remains relevant in response to brother Howard Zinn’s heartfelt, crucial and challenging question. by Cornel West |
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Currently video only.
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by Dedi Baron | 0 votes |
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Dedi Baron: Answertext will be available soon. by Dedi Baron |
Donato Bayu Bay Bumacas: I have a very short answer to this question. There is no other way but to use it to provide basic services for the people. That’s the only way you should use the money instead of using it for military exercises. I think it's nothing -- it's really worldwide where when we see the budget of these countries like especially the Third World countries, we see that at least more than 30 percent of the budget goes to the military and they result to nothing. And because of that, budget for basic social services are being sacrificed. And so, for me, I would say there is only one way we should put this billions and billions of money to the provision of basic social services needed by the people especially on the local and indigenous-based communities who are marginalized in terms of social services, and maybe this is because most of the budget goes to the military instead of allocating it to the basic social services which response to the basic needs of the people. The challenge is how many governments would dare to allocate their funds -- more funds to the basic social services? |
Dritëro Kasapi: Wow, Mr. Zinn, I think there’s a lot of ways that money could be spent. But, if I have to prioritize, I’d say education, education, and education. I think education is the key for many things in life. It gives--it empowers people. It builds up skills, creates opportunities, self-confidence. Education also gives way for the individual to use its creativity in positive ways and I think that education is an important and maybe one of the key solutions to a lot of problems in the world today. So, that’s why I feel that investing in education is probably the best thing we can do, globally. |
Eliane Potiguara: All new forms of colonization I call neo-colonization, modern colonization which –in reality- has the same face as before. It's just this new form of domination, which has changed its colors, which comes along with food aid, with Internet...So for me the colonization has been the same all the time. This new form of colonization smiles and at the same time makes us bleed. It smiles but it sucks out the life of the people, it violates the human rights. This neo-colonization is really the worst. In times of the colonization, when the flags of the colonist entered our country, 1500 and onwards, those colonists used weapons against the indigenous people and against the Africans that had come from Africa to help and to settle the process of colonization and to form the administrative divisions and hereditary fiefs like for example of King John VI, Peter II, Peter I and so on... Today it's just the same thing that occurs. Colonization in a new garment, but all the same for me – dictatorship. It's dictatorship, globalization but only for the government, for those who have power, for the big capitalists, opportunity for the entrepreneurs. Oportunity of work, opportunity for growth, opportunity for housing, health of the land, oppotunity for surviving, of cultural preservation, of cosmovision. Dictatorship, colonization, neo-colonization – all the same stuff! It's just the name that changes and the attitudes how they patronize us. They give us small alms in order to silence us – but the people sees everything! |
Eliot Weinberger: Hello, Howard Zinn. Of course, you know the answer to that question. I am surprised you are asking. Obviously, housing, education, health, infrastructure, and mass transit, research into alternate energies. Basically, I think any way that one could spend that trillion dollars a year on something other than a military budget would be all to the good. I mean, the problem of course with military budgets is that military budgets do nothing for the infrastructure. Military budget, the money that’s spent on the military and on disposable weapons, doesn’t really help the economy at all because it adds nothing to the way we live. It creates a lot of disposable junk, which becomes obsolete very quickly. So, other than the small number of jobs that it creates in an armament industry, which could be much better served in a, say, a mass transit industry creating trains and so forth. It doesn’t help [rise the boats] of the economy in general. So, I think that almost -– it’s hard to think of any other use of that trillion dollars that would be worse than -- than would be worse than spending it on the military. In fact, if they burn those trillion dollars, it would probably be better, because at least they wouldn’t be creating anything that kills someone. |
Elisabet Sahtouris: Oh, what we could do with that big military budget around the world! I would of course spend that military budget around the world on helping people to develop their local economies. Many of the people of the world are landless because their lands were taken from them during the colonialist phase. And that phase really isn’t over for us yet. Many people continue to be disenfranchised from land as well as from political voice. And aid doesn’t work. In Africa for instance massive aid has, food aid, has been sent there and every time there’s a massive dose of food aid people grow less food at the same time. So it creates a dependency, it creates a kind of slavery where people are unable to take care of themselves. And that is what has to be changed. We might have to use some of that money to buy land back for people. We need to get rid of the foreign investment schemes that force people to grow meat or wheat or whatever for foreign export rather than for themselves. I consider agribusiness one of the great problems in the world because food production should be as much as possible local, for local consumption, the way it was a few centuries ago. And we can still trade our surpluses, there are some wonderful examples of how to do that. Bainbridge Island in Washington State in the United States for instance has a sister island in central America that grows its organic coffee. And the Bainbridge Island people in the north pay those coffee growers ten times what other growers are paid for the same product. And it’s a wonderful win-win situation for the people in both places. So we could be developing a lot of economic cooperation as well as local self-sufficiency in the world. And I think that’s the first order of business. |
Ervin Laszlo: This is the question of imposed as the use of the so-called peace dividends. There are many users. There have to be peaceful users, social and ecological users. And the main objective here is to create some level of social sustainability, social justice and ecological balance and therefore sustainability and the possibility of development for all people, no matter how they grade the live and what is their level of economic and social development. by Ervin Laszlo |
Esther Mwaura-Muiru: The trillion dollars a year spent by the United States and other countries, I suggest give it to grassroots women. If you gave it to grassroots women, the many self-help groups of poor women in rural communities of this world, in urban centers of this world, and you give them this money to scale up what they are doing, whether it’s actually creating a just world by recreating the social system, the values, in their own community, whether it is protecting their environment which they use to provide livelihoods for their people in the communities, their families, whether it’s actually taking care for the people who are dying in the HIV and AIDS for the sake of Africa, whether it’s providing education for their children, I can tell you, you can change the world. And if we scale up the activities of these poor women in their communities, it would tell us the direction unto which we must put viable policies, to have positive impact in development in the world. I insist, give it to grassroots communities, grassroots women in particular, who already are in groups of communities that are creatively and collectively interested to change the world. They can’t change it, because they are powerless. A large amount of what they would have used to develop, to change the world, has been extracted out of them. Bring it back to them, and they will change the world. |
Fernando Solanas: There is no doubt that the best use for the money which is actually being used for the military machinery of the United States would be for the satisfaction of the necessity of people who are suffering from hunger. About ten million people and children in the world are dying of hunger and curable diseases. The biggest crime against humanity is hunger. The biggest crime and attack and violence against people is taking them their food. Food and water. There are entire nations that are dying of thirst. There are entire nations that are dying of lack of medicaments that they could have, but there is a genocide in Africa because of AIDS. It is scandalous that medicaments and food are an instrument of profit and of individual appropriation of business. This is scandalous. The militar budget of the United States could end up with a genocide that produces hunger and curable diseases that humanity is already suffering from. |
Fred Matser: The best use would be to spend money on the alleviation of poverty, on introducing primary healthcare system on fighting AIDS, providing people with clean water, helping people to become empowered, become inspired, help them to give them respect for themselves, give back the power to the people that would be my big statement to say. Do not believe in the delegated dysfunctional power, but help with the trillions of dollars to connect with the grassroots, allow people to live in coexistence with one another, to love them to help and open their hearts. Of course, we have to mentally help and educate them, but also to help and develop their heart qualities, their quality of feelings, allow ourself to be vulnerable, allow our leaders to be vulnerable, spend time on functional agriculture and helping children to play to develop them in their full existence, allow them and welcome them into the world, not governed by fear but by love, by unconditional love. If we would spend that money in that way, then we might see a real prosperous world where we all know that we coexist and where we can live in abundance. And of course, that is not something that can happen from day today, it needs time, it needs time to change our belief systems. We have to learn to trust oneself and the other, to have confidence in all our divine qualities to come through, and that takes time. It takes time to change our belief system, to change our mindset. We have to be in dialog and keep on dialoging about it. by Fred Matser |
Galsan Tschinag: The money that is wasted for murder and destruction would be enough to solve the totality of problems that mankind has to face. Amongst them is the elimination of hunger, the healing of human diseases, the creation of a better educational system, the reconstruction of the disfigured planet and the purification of water and air. The fact that we know all of this and still don't act, that we pointlessly and senselessly spend money for destruction and not for construction is the proof for the immaturity of the Homo sapiens. This is one reason more to grow up. To finally be a grown-up species. |
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