Christian Charities Blow the Whistle
Christian Charities in the UK demand government address poverty:
“Keep your promise to the poor” – that was the challenge from Christian charities to the UK Government at the launch of the Blow the Whistle campaign in Westminster this week.
World Vision Chief Executive Charles Badenoch said that the Government could have taken moral leadership when it made its decision on Trident this week.
“The billions of pounds spent on arms could be spent alleviating world poverty,” he said. “Then we would not only have a more just world, but a more secure world.”
Blow the Whistle comes at the halfway point for the Government to meet the promises it made in 2000, when it joined other world leaders at the United Nations’ Millennium Summit to set the Millennium Development Goals, which aim to halve global poverty by 2015.
The campaign, run by the Micah Challenge coalition of churches and Christian charities, will put pressure on the Government and the international community to look at the half-time scores and resolve to turn the match around, so that extreme poverty and hunger really are halved for the world’s poor by 2015.
Like the United Kingdom, the United States government also spends an astonishing amount on military. When including past military expenses (e.g. veterans benefits), the United States federal government spends over one trillion dollars per year on military expenses. Excluding trust funds (e.g. social security), military spending accounts for 51% of United States federal spending.
With that money, the United States could not only end hunger and poverty in it’s own country (best done by providing student loans, in my opinion), but also they could end hunger everywhere. Remember, 14 million children in the United States live in food insecure households. 1 in 8 United States citizens live in poverty.
Why does the United States waste the money on an over-inflated military budget? Private companies in the military industry make huge profits (which mostly go to lazy non-working shareholders). Companies like Halliburton get rich off needless military spending and expensive wars such as the Iraq War . These military companies use that money to buy off politicians through lobbying, bribes, and campaign contributions. The government literally steals the money from taxpayers, and splits it with its cohorts.
Don’t let anyone trick you into thinking of this racket as a free-market. See the truth: Mega-corporations control the government to use its coercive powers to rob, control, and manipulate the masses and working-people.
We need to take our taxes back and use that money – our money – to fix the problems facing us, such as poverty and hunger. We can no longer allow the average working-class family to live in debt while lazy thieves live in luxury.
Christian or not, I say we all “blow the whistle” on these governments and war-profiteers.
