Take Back Your Life in Ten Steps

By Tony Schwartz, HBR, January 10, 2013
You’re smart, hard-working and good at what you do, but the truth is you also too often feel your life is just a relentless set of demands you have to meet, and too rarely a source of satisfaction. You long to feel more in control of your days, but the reality is you’re frequently racing just to keep up.

This is the story I hear over and over at every level in organizations, from first line managers all the way up to CEOs in large companies. I’m convinced it doesn’t have to be this way, and that the solution has to do with deeply embedding a series of simple practices into your life.

I have ten in mind, but it’s not realistic to add them all at once, assuming there are a number you don’t currently do.

The suggestions are in order from the most basic and fundamental, to the highest level.

1. Get sufficient sleep every night. Sleep is often the single most undervalued behavior in our lives and the one with the most immediate power to improve our experience in every waking moment. If you sleep in the 6-6½ hour range, like the average American, just one more hour of sleep a night will leave you feeling more physically energized, emotionally resilient, and mentally clear.

2. Move more. It’s not only good for your heart’s health, but also for your mental health. Do some form of exercise that significantly raises your heart rate for 30 minutes at least four times a week and move frequently during the day.

3. Eat less, more often. Food is fuel. Lean proteins and complex carbohydrates are high-octane fuel. You’re best off when you keep feeding your internal furnace in small doses throughout the day, beginning with breakfast.

4. Renew more. Human beings aren’t designed to work continuously. We’re meant instead to move between spending and renewing energy. Ideally, take a break every 90 minutes, even if only to spend a minute or two breathing deeply.

5. Invest in those you love. The greatest gift you can give is your absorbed attention. Better to be fully present with someone for an hour than physically present, but distracted, for multiple hours.

6. Give thanks. We’re far quicker to notice what’s wrong in our lives than we are what’s right. At least once a week, hand write and mail a note of appreciation to someone who deserves it, telling the person precisely what you’re grateful for.

7. Do the most important thing first. Early in the morning, you’re likely to have the most energy, and the fewest distractions. Start your workday by focusing without interruption, for 60 to 90 minutes, on the most important and/or challenging task you can accomplish that day.

8. Practice reflection. We’re so preoccupied with the urgent that we rarely take time to think about what it is we’re doing. Set aside 15 to 30 minutes at the end of each work day (or in the evening) to reflect quietly and without interruption on what you learned that day, and what your highest priorities are for the following day.

9. Keep learning. Our brains work better if we challenge them, and life becomes more interesting when we do. Reading books is a simple and surefire way to learn and grow, but so is building a daily practice around learning a new language, a sport, a musical instrument, or around how to write code, fix a car, or draw.

10. Give back. Take at least one hour a week to put your own needs aside and devote that time instead to adding value to the world at large. One hour a week is very little time, but it’s a start—and it’s also more than most of us regularly give.

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For Americans Under 50, Stark Findings on Health

By Sabrina Tavernise, NY Times, January 9, 2013 Younger Americans die earlier and live in poorer health than their counterparts in other developed countries, with far higher rates of death from guns, car accidents and drug addiction, according to a new analysis of health and longevity in the United States. Researchers have known for some time that the United States fares poorly in comparison with other rich countries, a trend established in the 1980s. But most studies have focused on older ages, when the majority of people die. The findings were stark. Deaths before age 50 accounted for about two-thirds of the difference in life expectancy between males in the United States and their counterparts in 16 other developed countries, and about one-third of the difference for females. The countries in the analysis included Canada, Japan, Australia, France, Germany and Spain. The 378-page study by a panel of experts convened by the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council is the first to systematically compare death rates and health measures for people of all ages, including American youths. It went further than other studies in documenting the full range of causes of death, from diseases to accidents to violence. It was based on a broad review of mortality and health studies and statistics. The panel called the pattern of higher rates of disease and shorter lives “the U.S. health disadvantage,” and said it was responsible for dragging the country to the bottom in terms of life expectancy over the past 30 years. American men ranked last in life expectancy among the 17 countries in the study, and American women ranked second to last. “Something fundamental is going wrong,” said Dr. Steven Woolf, chairman of the Department of Family Medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University, who led the panel. “This is not the product of a particular administration or political party. Something at the core is causing the U.S. to slip behind these other high-income countries. And it’s getting worse.” Car accidents, gun violence and drug overdoses were major contributors to years of life lost by Americans before age 50. The rate of firearm homicides was 20 times higher in the United States than in the other countries, according to the report, which cited a 2011 study of 23 countries. And though suicide rates were lower in the United States, firearm suicide rates were six times higher. Sixty-nine percent of all American homicide deaths in 2007 involved firearms, compared with an average of 26 percent in other countries, the study said. “The bottom line is that we are not preventing damaging health behaviors,” said Samuel Preston, a demographer and sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania, who was on the panel. Panelists were surprised at just how consistently Americans ended up at the bottom of the rankings. The United States had the second-highest death rate from the most common form of heart disease, the kind that causes heart attacks, and the second-highest death rate from lung disease, a legacy of high smoking rates in past decades. American adults also have the highest diabetes rates. Youths fared no better. The United States has the highest infant mortality rate among these countries, and its young people have the highest rates of sexually transmitted diseases, teen pregnancy and deaths from car crashes. Americans lose more years of life before age 50 to alcohol and drug abuse than people in any of the other countries. Americans also had the lowest probability over all of surviving to the age of 50. The report’s second chapter details health indicators for youths where the United States ranks near or at the bottom. There are so many that the list takes up four pages. Chronic diseases, including heart disease, also played a role for people under 50. “We expected to see some bad news and some good news,” Dr. Woolf said. “But the U.S. ranked near and at the bottom in almost every heath indicator. That stunned us.” There were bright spots. Death rates from cancers that can be detected with tests, like breast cancer, were lower in the United States. Adults had better control over their cholesterol and high blood pressure. And the very oldest Americans—above 75—tended to outlive their counterparts. The panel sought to explain the poor performance. It noted the United States has a highly fragmented health care system, with limited primary care resources and a large uninsured population. It has the highest rates of poverty among the countries studied. Still, even the people most likely to be healthy, like college-educated Americans and those with high incomes, fare worse on many health indicators. The report also explored less conventional explanations. Could cultural factors like individualism and dislike of government interference play a role? Americans are less likely to wear seat belts and more likely to ride motorcycles without helmets. The United States is a bigger, more heterogeneous society with greater levels of economic inequality, and comparing its health outcomes to those in countries like Sweden or France may seem lopsided. But the panelists point out that this country spends more on health care than any other in the survey. And as recently as the 1950s, Americans scored better in life expectancy and disease than many of the other countries in the current study.

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'Snowball Truce' Brings Brief Joy to War-Weary Damascus

Reuters, January 10, 2013
BEIRUT (Reuters)—For a few fleeting hours, residents of Syria’s capital dropped their guns for snowballs and traded hatred for laughter.

A rare snowfall that covered Damascus in white on Wednesday sparked an overnight outbreak of playfulness among Syrians, who momentarily ignored their bloody civil war and forgot their affiliations as dissidents, loyalists and even soldiers.

“Last night, for the first time in months, I heard laughter instead of shelling. Even the security forces put down their guns and helped us make a snowman,” Iman, a resident of the central Shaalan neighborhood, said by Skype on Thursday.

“It was the first time in a long time that I remember talking to our neighbors who are pro-opposition.”

A winter storm ravaged Syria and its neighbors this week, flooding and freezing towns across the region. But residents in the capital said the snow briefly swept away their misery.

“We felt a smile that has been missing from our faces for almost two years and we were all just Syrians,” said Amin, a resident of central Damascus, speaking on the internet.

“For a few hours our hearts were as pure as the snow.”

These days, Damascus streets mostly empty after dark. Residents stay at home for fear of violence or kidnapping. Jittery soldiers guard checkpoints and public buildings from clashes and explosions that sometimes penetrate the heart of the city.

But on Wednesday night, residents in several neighborhoods said they had stayed out until the early hours to enjoy the snow, teased by soldiers who usually stand in grim silence.

“We were out until 2 a.m. just playing … Last night there were woman and children and men outside and no one was afraid,” said a resident speaking by internet from Midan, a largely pro-opposition neighborhood in Damascus.

“Last night the soldiers threw snowballs at us from their checkpoints. Everyone started coming out and the soldiers would joke: ‘Oh no, is this a protest?’” he said.

For most, the snow truce offered little hope of better days, but some said it showed Syrians could still coexist in future.

“I don’t think there is any hope we can stop this war—this morning, I could hear the shelling again,” said Iman.

“But yesterday, everyone loved each other. And I feel sure that one day we can live together again.”

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The Source of True Happiness

A compilation

Download Audio (6.9MB)

God is so vastly wonderful, so utterly and completely delightful that He can, without anything other than Himself, meet and overflow the deepest demands of our total nature.—Aiden Tozer1

*

The place for which He designs [human beings] in His scheme of things is the place they are made for. When they reach it, their nature is fulfilled and their happiness attained: a broken bone in the universe has been set, the anguish is over. When we want to be something other than the thing God wants us to be, we must be wanting what, in fact, will not make us happy. Those Divine demands which sound to our natural ears most like those of a despot and least like those of a lover, in fact marshall us where we should want to go if we knew what we wanted.—C. S. Lewis2

*

I know what it takes in each person's life to bring you to the place where you clearly see your own insufficiency, where you come to realize the vanity of the flesh and of the world, where your need for Me becomes a genuine fact.

That is the place where you see things in the Spirit, through My eyes‚ which are the eyes of the truest‚ deepest reality. That is the place where you see that I am the center, the reason, the meaning of everything‚ and that without Me there is nothing.

The end result of allowing you to go through hardship is to bring you to this very place in spirit. This is the place where you end and I begin. This is the place where you are nothing and I am everything. This is the place where I enter you and possess you.—Jesus, speaking in prophecy3

*

Jesus is my God.
Jesus is my Spouse.
Jesus is my Life.
Jesus is my only Love.
Jesus is my All in All.
Jesus is my Everything.
—Mother Teresa

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Repent and believe in the Gospel, Jesus says. Turn around and believe that the good news that we are loved is gooder than we ever dared hope, and that to believe in that good news, to live out of it and toward it, to be in love with that good news, is of all glad things in this world the gladdest thing of all.—Frederick Buechner

*

Only to sit and think of God,
Oh, what a joy it is!
To think the thought, to breathe the name;
Earth has no higher bliss.
Father of Jesus, love’s reward!
What rapture will it be,
Prostrate before Thy throne to lie,
And gaze and gaze on Thee!
—Frederick Faber

*

What we have been told is how we men can be drawn into Christ—can become part of that wonderful present which the young Prince of the universe wants to offer to His Father—that present which is Himself and therefore us in Him. It is the only thing we were made for. And there are strange, exciting hints in the Bible that when we are drawn in, a great many other things in Nature will begin to come right. The bad dream will be over: it will be morning.—C. S. Lewis4

*

To gain this closer walk with Me, where the things of this world have less allure and attraction, you must count the things of this world a loss if they keep you from Me. “How do I do that?” you ask. You do it by keeping your eyes on heaven, on eternity, knowing that the things of this earth are but a vapor that will pass away and be gone in a few short years, but the things of My Spirit will endure forever. It’s the eternal vision. The flesh and the things of this earth that often seem so important now will soon be gone.

So reach forward to the things that are before, pressing toward the mark of your high calling.5 Focus your mind on heavenly places, thinking of that which is to come rather than on the things which are, the many things that surround you.6

All things change or pass away eventually, and only I endure.—Jesus, speaking in prophecy7

*

But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ.

Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death.

Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me.

Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead,

I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.—Apostle Paul, Philippians 3:7–10, 12–14

*

Discovering that I am enough is an experience that each person must go through for themselves. Receiving the passion and desire to find this out comes from loving and cherishing My Word, from spending time with Me, and going through all of life's experiences together. Then, like someone who has fallen in love, you will want more of Me. You will want to know how I think‚ how I feel‚ how I would like for you to go about something. You then discover how wise, how resourceful, and how wonderful I am. I will become everything to you.—Jesus, speaking in prophecy8

Published on Anchor January 2013. Read by Simon Peterson.


1 The Pursuit of God.

2 The Problem of Pain.

3 Originally published June 2006.

4 Mere Christianity.

5 Philippians 3:13–14.

6 Colossians 3:2.

7 Originally published June 2006.

8 Originally published June 2006.

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Um Farol no Nevoeiro

David Bolick

O outro dia li um texto do rabino Evan Moffic que fez muito sentido. Ele dizia no último parágrafo:

O filósofo Soren Kierkegaard certa vez disse que “a vida é vivida em perspectiva e entendida em retrospectiva”. Nós temos o poder para entender em retrospectiva. Não podemos mudar o passado, mas podemos mudar o seu significado para nós. O que decidimos lembrar ajuda a nos moldar para o futuro.[1]

Um bom exemplo disso foi José, no Antigo Testamento. Ele disse para os irmãos, “Vocês planejaram o mal contra mim, mas Deus o tornou em bem, para que hoje fosse preservada a vida de muitos.”[2]

Já percebi, como o rabino Moffic, a minha tendência a memória seletiva. É como se todas as coisas ruins fossem selecionadas por meio de um filtro, e mesmo que passassem pelo crivo, fossem relegadas a uma posição de menor importância. Não é uma decisão consciente, apenas uma reação automática derivada da convicção de Romanos 8:28[3]—uma das muitas vantagens que tem aquele que pertence ao Senhor.

Mas certas situações exigem um esforço para serem colocadas em uma perspectiva positiva, principalmente quando percebo que a minha memória está enveredando pelo lado escuro e redirecionando meus pensamentos. Sendo assim, mesmo não tendo nada de bom na lembrança, eu crio algo positivo deliberadamente, dou uma colher de chá à pessoa ou à situação que me incomoda, ou enfatizo o pensamento que, mesmo que eu não consiga ver nada de bom a respeito da situação no momento, isso não anula a verdade de Romanos 8:28.

Uma tática muito eficaz para neutralizar a chateação é dizer algo como, “Fulano de tal pisou no meu calo, mas deve ter sido um reflexo da minha atitude com ele, e essa dificuldade na convivência deve ser real para nós dois.” Poderíamos comparar isso ao uso de uma lanterna para determinar em que direção seguir na falta de luz natural. A lanterna não ilumina tanto quanto a luz do sol, mas com ela certamente não vamos ficar tateando no escuro. E já descobri que se eu insistir no uso da luz artificial, em breve a minha percepção natural daquele caminho anteriormente sombrio se torna mais positiva.

Esse princípio tem funcionado comigo não só quando eu sou a vítima, mas também quando sou o vilão. Na verdade, tenho alcançado as maiores vitórias quando percebo o lobo debaixo da minha pele de ovelha e reconheço tanto a necessidade de ser perdoado como a de perdoar.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn compartilhou esse mesmo pensamento por ocasião do seu retorno à Rússia depois de um longo exílio. Ele viajou pelo país todo, tendo contato com muita gente que partilhava da ideologia dos responsáveis pelo seu exílio. Os seus colaboradores criticaram essa atitude e não aprovaram o seu contato com esse tipo de pessoa. Solzhenitsyn disse, “A questão não é apenas a perfídia cometida por indivíduos maus e a necessidade de separá-los do resto de nós e destruí-los. Mas a linha que separa o bem do mal passa diretamente pelo coração do ser humano, e quem vai querer destruir um pedaço do seu próprio coração?”

Tenho percebido cada vez mais a complexidade e a grande quantidade de detalhes relacionados ao viver avida. Devo admitir a minha atitude bastante simplista na avaliação de diferentes questões, e aceitar a realidade de que, no momento, falta-me conhecimento suficiente para julgar retamente diferentes situações. Mas, por outro lado, isso tem colaborado para eu entender melhor pessoas e situações.

Talvez pudesse comparar à maneira como a nossa visão periférica fica mais dinâmica que a visão central em um ambiente pouco iluminado. Pode ser que eu consiga entender muito mais se afrouxar um pouco a maneira como interpreto pessoas e situações por meio da minha limitada percepção, e apoiar-me mais na verdade que conheço sobre elas com base na Palavra de Deus.

Na maioria das corridas das quais participo, geralmente tem alguns deficientes visuais. Apoiando-se na sua capacidade visual, esses atletas jamais conseguiriam acompanhar o ritmo, pois se locomoveriam como o típico cego, batendo a bengala no chão. Mas cada um desses deficientes visuais está conectado por meio de uma pulseira e uma tira de uns 30 cm, ao pulso de um corredor. E eles correm lado a lado, para o segundo direcionar o deficiente -- e tudo funciona otimamente bem.

“Se alguém acha que sabe todas as respostas, está apenas mostrando sua própria ignorância. Aquele, porém que verdadeiramente ama a Deus, esse está em condições de receber o conhecimento vindo de Deus. De igual modo, agora só podemos ver e compreender um pouquinho a respeito de Deus, como se estivéssemos observando seu reflexo num espelho muito ruim; mas o dia chegará quando O veremos integralmente, face a face. Tudo quanto sei agora é obscuro e confuso, mas depois verei tudo com clareza, tão claramente como Deus está vendo agora mesmo o interior do meu coração!”[4]

“Amados, agora somos filhos de Deus, e ainda não se manifestou o que havemos de ser, mas sabemos que, quando ele se manifestar, seremos semelhantes a ele, pois o veremos como ele é.”[5]

Tradução Hebe Rondon Flandoli. Revisão Tiago Sant’Ana.


[1] http://michaelhyatt.com/we-are-what-we-remember.html.

[2] Gênesis 50:20 Nova Versão Internacional.

[3] Sabemos que Deus age em todas as coisas para o bem daqueles que o amam, dos que foram chamados de acordo com o seu propósito.
(NVI).

[4] 1 Coríntios 8:2–3; 13:12 Novo Testamento Vivo.

[5] 1 João 3:2 NVI.

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The Sad Story of a Life Without God

Georgia Purdom


Over the Christmas break as I was waiting on my daughter to choose some books from our local library, I was intrigued when I saw a book titled My Life without God. The book is an autobiography written by William (Bill) Murray, son of Madalyn Murray O’Hair. Madalyn Murray O’Hair is infamous for her fight to remove prayer from public schools that was achieved through a Supreme Court decision in 1963.

As I read about Bill and Madalyn’s life, I just kept thinking, “How is it possible that a woman who was an avowed Marxist and wanted to defect to the Soviet Union was given so much media attention and influence in the U.S. government?” If Madalyn were alive today, she would be grouped with the “New Atheists.” She was passionate about hating God and wanted all the fame and glory for herself. I’ve often thought that cases to remove “In God We Trust” from U.S. currency and “under God” from the pledge of allegiance were modern battles. However, Madalyn was fighting these very same battles in the 1960s. She wanted every trace of God completely removed from society.

Bill’s story is a very sad account, and at times I wasn’t sure I would be able to finish the book. He endured a lot of abuse physically, mentally, and emotionally. One time, his mother read through his junior high history book and made this comment:


“I can’t believe all the hogwash in there. It treats the parting of the Red Sea just like it really happened. It’s incredible! Later on it talks about Jesus and says he was the son of God, that he performed miracles and rose from the dead. [Expletive] stuff I ever read. It has no place in a public school textbook!”[1]

Having graduated from the public school system, I was shocked that at one time biblical history was part of the history books! The battles Madalyn and others fought with the public school system have made a huge impact on the information taught there over the last 40–50 years. We really shouldn’t be surprised that there is so much violence among children, especially in school. This is the result of children learning that—instead of being created in the image of God—they are nothing more than the result of time, death, and chance.

Bill became very disillusioned about life over the years, but wasn’t willing to give up on atheism yet. He wrote a letter to 400 members of his mother’s atheist organization. He stated the following:


I wrote to them asking for support of positive rather than negative atheism. I suggested we use funds to establish atheist chairs at universities rather than to sue to have religious chairs removed. I recommended the construction of monuments and hospital wings.[2]

And what was the response of the atheists?


A handful of people sent contributions out of habit. But the overwhelming majority of those who answered my letter pelted me with such abuse that I was stunned. Over and over I read that the principal goal of atheism was the destruction of religion and that this was no time to build.[3]

Pure and simple atheism is nothing more than rebellion against God. That is it’s sole goal and purpose. There is nothing in atheism to “build” on. If you think people are nothing more than animals, evolved by random chance, then there is no ultimate meaning and purpose in life. Why build hospitals to save people’s lives? Why bother teaching people anything at all?

These events and others led Bill to believe that God must exist, so he gave his life to Christ at the age of 33. A short while later, Bill wrote a letter to the people of the city of Baltimore where the case to remove prayer in public schools had begun. He wrote as follows:


First, I would like to apologize to the people of the City of Baltimore for whatever part I played in the removal of Bible reading and praying from the public schools of that city. I now realize the value of this great tradition and the importance it has played in the past in keeping America a moral and lawful country. I can now see the damage this removal has caused to our nation in the form of loss of faith and moral decline.[4]

In some ways it is sad to think about the impact that one person with sinful motives and actions can make in this world. But we should rejoice that one person with Christ-centered motives and actions can also make an impact in this world. As we begin 2013, think about ways you can impact the world around you. How can you equip people to defend the authority of the truth of God’s Word? Maybe through a Bible study, Sunday school class, having a conversation with a neighbor or friend, or maybe sending resources to a loved one who has questions. We can all make a difference.

Keep fighting the good fight of the faith!

[1] William J. Murray, My Life without God (New York: Thomas Nelson, 1982) p. 50.
[2] Ibid, p. 228.
[3] Ibid, pp. 228-229.
[4] Ibid, p. 247.

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Germany, for Decades a Pacifist Power, Faces the Need to Play a Military Role

By Nicholas Kulish, NY Times, January 5, 2013
BERLIN—When Chancellor Angela Merkel hosted a recent reception for military families, she greeted parents, wives and children whose loved ones were spending their holidays in Afghanistan, Lebanon, Kosovo and off the Horn of Africa. German deployments overseas, Ms. Merkel said, “will soon encompass the entire globe.”

On that same wintry afternoon, members of Parliament debated whether to add to the nearly 6,000 German troops currently serving abroad by sending up to 400 soldiers to Turkey, where they would operate two Patriot missile batteries to help protect their NATO ally from a potential escalation of the civil war across the border in Syria.

“For decades, we Germans have benefited from the fact that our partners gave us the feeling of reliable security,” Thomas de Maizière, Germany’s defense minister, said during the debate last month. “Now we are in a position and have the duty, even, to make our impact felt.”

Only a handful of shivering protesters passed out fliers in front of the Brandenburg Gate opposing the deployment. The vote easily passed in the Parliament two days later.

It was not that long ago that every German military action brought with it mass demonstrations, public hand-wringing and probing questions about the country’s militarist past. But the shadow of history continues to recede here and Germany is, for better or worse, quietly approaching a normal relationship with its armed forces.

For the past three years, Europe has been preoccupied with economic issues as the debt crisis threatened to sunder the euro currency union. But strategic military questions cannot be ignored indefinitely. The United States is increasingly shifting its focus to the Asia-Pacific region and reducing the number of troops stationed in Europe.

“Europe has more responsibility for its own security, and Germany has to step up to that, particularly considering its new economic power in Europe,” said Constanze Stelzenmüller, senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund in Berlin.

Conscription was suspended indefinitely here in 2011 as part of a drive to professionalize and modernize the armed forces. In August, the Constitutional Court ruled for the first time that the German military could be deployed at home under exceptional circumstances, like in the wake of a terrorist attack.

“Naturally, a great deal has developed further in terms of the acceptance of deployments outside of this country and outside the NATO territory,” said Col. Ulrich Kirsch, chairman of the German Federal Armed Forces Association, which represents the interests of active and former military personnel. “But the Germans are, now as before, difficult to inspire for military operations.”

Military business is another matter. Germany is the world’s third-biggest arms exporter, behind only the United States and Russia, sending weapons not only to NATO members and allies like Israel but increasingly to the Middle East and beyond. As the business grows, critics at home question sales to undemocratic countries like Saudi Arabia.

Germany’s military industry employs an estimated 80,000 people, jobs Ms. Merkel wants to protect, especially less than a year before September’s parliamentary election. In October, German opposition helped doom the proposed merger of two aerospace giants, British-based BAE Systems and the consortium EADS, in part out of concern that German jobs and influence might be lost in the new entity.

Last month Der Spiegel, the influential newsmagazine, showed a grim-faced Ms. Merkel on the cover in a camouflage suit jacket with the headline “German Weapons for the World.” The magazine described the Merkel doctrine as deploying fewer German troops to conflict zones and instead strengthening partners by selling them arms. The German government approved military exports in excess of 10 billion euros, or over $13 billion, for the first time in 2011, the magazine reported.

That is an especially impressive feat considering that military expenditures in Western and Central Europe fell 1.9 percent in real terms that year, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Those cuts have “prompted unease in many quarters that European countries risk losing global influence as they fall further behind the United States in military capabilities,” the institute said in its most recent annual report on military spending, “while rising powers such as China rapidly catch up and even overtake them.”

Germany’s path forward could well determine the shape of Europe’s military affairs for years to come. Whether that is through a growing leadership role and the assumption of more responsibility for regional security or a limited, some say cynical, emphasis on protecting its own interests still remains to be seen.

“Germany is back in the game as one of the most important countries in the Western Hemisphere, but the kind of responsibility that goes with that is not really reflected in German government behavior,” said Olaf Böhnke, head of the Berlin office of the European Council on Foreign Relations. “If Germany wants to be in a leadership position, you need stronger military engagement.”

German troops have been in Afghanistan for more than a decade, but mostly restricted to the safer northern part of the country. The Bundeswehr, Germany’s army, sent its first Tiger attack helicopters to Afghanistan in December. On Tuesday the army announced that it had not suffered a single fatality in 2012 in Afghanistan.

“This conflict-averse basic attitude still remains, and one has to deal with it,” said Martin Kahl, a political scientist at the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg. “People feel safer than before. There is no enemy on the European continent who could lead a classic conflict.”

After World War II, West German politicians rejected military force for any goal other than self-defense, and a strong pacifist streak developed in the public. The end of the cold war brought the beginning of a long period of halting change. Allies, particularly in the United States, have repeatedly called for Germany to take more responsibility and a larger share of the burden.

“I don’t think it’s healthy for the future of Europe to give Germany this refuge where Germany handles the economy and doesn’t have to deal with the dirty stuff,” Mr. Böhnke said.

The biggest turning point was probably when Germany participated in airstrikes in the Kosovo war in 1999, a break with the taboo against offensive operations.

Even as Germany exports arms around the world, idealism about the use of force by German soldiers remains. In May 2010, Germany’s president, Horst Köhler, gave an interview to German public radio saying that society needed to recognize the sacrifices and contributions of the military. A broader political discussion was necessary, Mr. Köhler said, about the military’s role.

“A country of our size,” Mr. Köhler said, “with its focus on exports and thus reliance on foreign trade, must be aware that military deployments are necessary in an emergency to protect our interests, for example, when it comes to trade routes, for example, when it comes to preventing regional instabilities that could negatively influence our trade, jobs and incomes.”

A public outcry ensued, and Mr. Köhler resigned. But the German Navy was essentially already doing what Mr. Köhler described in his comments, as part of the multinational mission to combat piracy off the coast of Somalia. The government announced plans to suspend conscription just a few months after Mr. Köhler quit.

Parliament made it official in 2011, toppling in the process another of the remaining hurdles between Germany and a normal military.

“The suspension of conscription officially recognized the fact that the German Army had become a professional army,” said Ms. Stelzenmüller from the German Marshall Fund. “These are people who get paid for putting themselves in harm’s way, just like other Western armies.

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The enemy within: Soldier suicides outpaced combat deaths in 2012

By Bill Briggs, NBC News contributor, Jan. 2, 2012
More soldiers took their own lives than died in combat during 2012, new Department of Defense figures show. The Army’s suicide rate has climbed by 9 percent since the military branch launched its suicide-prevention campaign in 2009.

Through November, 177 active-duty soldiers had committed suicide compared to 165 during all of 2011 and 156 in 2010. In all of 2012, 176 soldiers were killed in action—all while serving in Operation Enduring Freedom, according to DOD.

Army suicides have increased by at least 54 percent since 2007 when there were 115—a number the Washington Post then called “an all-time record.” An Army spokesman said Wednesday it is uncertain if 177 marks a new annual high (with December numbers still to come), or if suicides have ever outpaced combat deaths in a single year, because the Army has not always tracked suicides.

Some Army families who recently lost members to suicide criticize the branch for failing to aggressively shake a culture in which soldiers believe they’ll be deemed weak and denied promotion if they seek mental health aid. They also blame Army leaders for focusing more heavily on weeding out emotionally troubled soldiers to artificially suppress the branch’s suicide stats versus embracing and helping members who are exhibiting clear signs of trouble.

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A Cluster Bomb Killed My Father

By Nadim Matta, Foreign Policy, January 3, 2013
As he did most days when I was home from university, my dad came into my room at six in the morning and placed a cup of Turkish coffee on my bedside table. He had been awake for a couple of hours, and he was getting ready to head back into the orchard under our house, in Bhamdoun, a picturesque town overlooking Beirut, to water the trees.

I had planned a “cleanliness campaign” that day with our Friends of Nature Club at the village. We had started the club that year as part of a fledgling environmental movement in Lebanon, but in the days following the Israeli invasion of 1982 we turned our attention to clearing up the rubble and debris of the aerial bombing of the Israel Defense Forces.

My dad was visibly worried. He said: “Baba, please be careful. There may still be unexploded bombs on the side of the streets. Be extra careful.”

These were the last words I heard him say. And probably the last words he said.

Later that morning, I took a break from the cleaning campaign to buy additional brooms for the volunteers. I had to go to the next town to pick these up. Curiously, the shop did not have brooms in the showroom, and the owner gave me the key to the storage house to get them. When I got there and turned the key in the keyhole, it broke inside.

Things happened very fast after that. Before I had time to react, a speeding car came to a screeching halt next to me. Militiamen were inside. One of them called my name, with an insistently alarming tone: “We have been looking for you everywhere! Get in the car quickly.” A few minutes later, the militiaman in the passenger seat turned back to me. “You have to be strong now. For the sake of your mother. Ammo Fadel was killed this morning. A cluster bomb exploded. Apparently the bomb got caught in the garden hose as he was dragging it between trees. He died instantly. It is best that you not look at him. His face is completely torn out.” (Ammo Fadel was how my father was known in the village.)

I did not say much for several days after that. And I did not drink Turkish coffee for several months.

In the weeks that followed, we were on the lookout for cluster bomblets in the village. We found hundreds of these in every place imaginable—snuggled underneath car tires, on street corners, inside homes, and of course in orchards and vineyards in our valley and in the thorn and thistle fields in the rugged hills above the village. The variety used at the time by the Israel Defense Forces was a little larger than size D batteries—with a white ribbon hanging from each. We detonated as many as we could.

This was June 1982. Bhamdoun’s strategic location on Mount Lebanon, high above the Mediterranean, made it a favorite spot for “last stand” battles between warring forces trying to control the road between Beirut and Damascus.

Much has happened since then. In September 1983, after the invading Israeli army withdrew from our part of the mountains, Christians and Druze fought a fierce battle in Bhamdoun for control of the mountains. Our village was torched to the ground. Fellow Bhamdounis, along with Christians from neighboring villages, were “ethnically cleansed” and took refuge in other parts of the country. We lived in exile for 15 years.

We have since rebuilt the village, in some cases restoring the old houses one stone at a time. We redid the dilapidated terraces on our land and replaced the orchard under our house with a vineyard. My son Karim, who was born and raised in the United States, graduated from George Washington University in 2012. He is now working in Lebanon to provide assistance to Palestinian refugees—more than 50 years into their own exile.

Karim called me the other day. He told me that he and his friends spent the weekend in the village, and he proudly mentioned that he went up with them on the mountain paths above our house. I was silent for a moment. And then I said: “Karim: Please be careful.… Be extra careful.…”

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The 'war on terror'--by design--can never end

Glenn Greenwald, The Guardian, 4 January 2013
Last month, outgoing pentagon general counsel Jeh Johnson gave a speech at the Oxford Union and said that the War on Terror must, at some point, come to an end:

“Now that efforts by the US military against al-Qaida are in their 12th year, we must also ask ourselves: How will this conflict end? … . ‘War’ must be regarded as a finite, extraordinary and unnatural state of affairs. We must not accept the current conflict, and all that it entails, as the ‘new normal.’ Peace must be regarded as the norm toward which the human race continually strives… .

“There will come a tipping point at which so many of the leaders and operatives of al-Qaida and its affiliates have been killed or captured, and the group is no longer able to attempt or launch a strategic attack against the United States, that al-Qaida will be effectively destroyed.”

On Thursday night, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow interviewed Johnson, and before doing so, she opined as follows:

“When does this thing we are in now end? And if it does not have an end—and I’m not speaking as a lawyer here, I am just speaking as a citizen who feels morally accountable for my country’s actions—if it does not have an end, then morally speaking it does not seem like it is a war. And then, our country is killing people and locking them up outside the traditional judicial system in a way I think we maybe cannot be forgiven for.”

It is precisely the intrinsic endlessness of this so-called “war” that is its most corrupting and menacing attribute, for the reasons Maddow explained. But despite the happy talk from Johnson, it is not ending soon. By its very terms, it cannot. And all one has to do is look at the words and actions of the Obama administration to know this.

In October, the Washington Post’s Greg Miller reported that the administration was instituting a “disposition matrix” to determine how terrorism suspects will be disposed of, all based on this fact: “among senior Obama administration officials, there is broad consensus that such operations are likely to be extended at least another decade.” As Miller puts it: “That timeline suggests that the United States has reached only the midpoint of what was once known as the global war on terrorism.”

The polices adopted by the Obama administration just over the last couple of years leave no doubt that they are accelerating, not winding down, the war apparatus that has been relentlessly strengthened over the last decade. In the name of the War on Terror, the current president has diluted decades-old Miranda warnings; codified a new scheme of indefinite detention on US soil; plotted to relocate Guantanamo to Illinois; increased secrecy, repression and release-restrictions at the camp; minted a new theory of presidential assassination powers even for US citizens; renewed the Bush/Cheney warrantless eavesdropping framework for another five years, as well as the Patriot Act, without a single reform; and just signed into law all new restrictions on the release of indefinitely held detainees.

Does that sound to you like a government anticipating the end of the War on Terror any time soon? Or does it sound like one working feverishly to make their terrorism-justified powers of detention, surveillance, killing and secrecy permanent? About all of this, the ACLU’s Executive Director, Anthony Romero, provided the answer on Thursday: “President Obama has utterly failed the first test of his second term, even before inauguration day. His signature means indefinite detention without charge or trial, as well as the illegal military commissions, will be extended.”

There’s a good reason US officials are assuming the “War on Terror” will persist indefinitely: namely, their actions ensure that this occurs. The New York Times’ Matthew Rosenberg this morning examines what the US government seems to regard as the strange phenomenon of Afghan soldiers attacking US troops with increasing frequency, and in doing so, discovers a shocking reality: people end up disliking those who occupy and bomb their country:

“Such insider attacks, by Afghan security forces on their Western allies, became ‘the signature violence of 2012’, in the words of one former American official. The surge in attacks has provided the clearest sign yet that Afghan resentment of foreigners is becoming unmanageable, and American officials have expressed worries about its disruptive effects on the training mission that is the core of the American withdrawal plan for 2014… .

“But behind it all, many senior coalition and Afghan officials are now concluding that after nearly 12 years of war, the view of foreigners held by many Afghans has come to mirror that of the Taliban. Hope has turned into hatred, and some will find a reason to act on those feelings.

“‘A great percentage of the insider attacks have the enemy narrative—the narrative that the infidels have to be driven out—somewhere inside of them, but they aren’t directed by the enemy,’ said a senior coalition officer, who asked not to be identified because of Afghan and American sensitivities about the attacks.”

In other words, more than a decade of occupying and brutalizing that country has turned large swaths of the population into the “Taliban”, to the extent that the “Taliban” means: Afghans willing to use violence to force the US and its allies out of their country. As always, the US—through the very policies of aggression and militarism justified in the name of terrorism—is creating the very “terrorists” those polices are supposedly designed to combat. It’s a pure and perfect system of self-perpetuation.

Exactly the same thing is happening in Yemen, where nothing is more effective at driving Yemenis into the arms of al-Qaida than the rapidly escalated drone attacks under Obama. This morning, the Times reported that US air strikes in Yemen are carried out in close cooperation with the air force of Saudi Arabia, which will only exacerbate that problem. Indeed, virtually every person accused of plotting to target the US with terrorist attacks in last several years has expressly cited increasing US violence, aggression and militarism in the Muslim world as the cause.

There’s no question that this “war” will continue indefinitely. There is no question that US actions are the cause of that, the gasoline that fuels the fire. The only question—and it’s becoming less of a question for me all the time—is whether this endless war is the intended result of US actions or just an unwanted miscalculation.

It’s increasingly hard to make the case that it’s the latter. The US has long known, and its own studies have emphatically concluded, that “terrorism” is motivated not by a “hatred of our freedoms” but by US policy and aggression in the Muslim world. This causal connection is not news to the US government. Despite this—or, more accurately, because of it—they continue with these policies.

One of the most difficult endeavors is to divine the motives of other people (divining our own motives is difficult enough). That becomes even more difficult when attempting to discern the motives not of a single actor but a collection of individuals with different motives and interests (“the US government”).

But what one can say for certain is that there is zero reason for US officials to want an end to the war on terror, and numerous and significant reasons why they would want it to continue. It’s always been the case that the power of political officials is at its greatest, its most unrestrained, in a state of war. Cicero, two thousand years ago, warned that “In times of war, the law falls silent” (Inter arma enim silent leges). John Jay, in Federalist No. 4, warned that as a result of that truth, “nations in general will make war whenever they have a prospect of getting anything by it … for the purposes and objects merely personal, such as thirst for military glory, revenge for personal affronts, ambition, or private compacts to aggrandize or support their particular families or partisans.”

If you were a US leader, or an official of the National Security State, or a beneficiary of the private military and surveillance industries, why would you possibly want the war on terror to end? It’s that war that generates limitless power, impenetrable secrecy, an unquestioning citizenry, and massive profit.

Just this week, a federal judge ruled that the Obama administration need not respond to the New York Times and the ACLU’s mere request to disclose the government’s legal rationale for why the President believes he can target US citizens for assassination without due process. Even while recognizing how perverse her own ruling was—“The Alice-in-Wonderland nature of this pronouncement is not lost on me” and it imposes “a veritable Catch-22”—the federal judge nonetheless explained that federal courts have constructed such a protective shield around the US government in the name of terrorism that it amounts to an unfettered license to violate even the most basic rights: “I can find no way around the thicket of laws and precedents that effectively allow the executive branch of our government to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face incompatible with our Constitution and laws while keeping the reasons for their conclusion a secret.”

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