TR-53
"Ten Tribes Tribal Report"
USA, UK, Ireland.
3 January 2012, 7 Tevet 5772
Contents:
1. USA and World: The USA is Still No.1.
The Happiest Countries in the World
By Bruce Stokes
2. UK: The New British Christian Menace to the Jewish People.
UK BISHOPS COME OUT CLEARLY AGAINST ISRAEL
by Giulio Meotti
3. Ireland: Interesting Article About Michael Collins.

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1. USA and World: The USA is Still No.1.
The Happiest Countries in the World
By Bruce Stokes
http://www.forbes
.com/2010/07/14/world-
happiest-countries-lifestyle-real
estate-gallup_slide_2.html
 

Happiest Nations
1 Denmark

2 Finland

3 Norway

4 Costa Rica

5 Canada

6  Panama

7 Malawi

8 Libya

9 Botswana

10 New Zealand

11 Israel

12 Australia



By Bruce Stokes
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/
archive/2011/06/the-happiest-
countries-in-the-world/240103/
Jun 8 2011, 10:00 AM ET13

Extracts:
The pursuit of happiness is one of America's promises to its citizens, enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. But today, Americans are a profoundly unhappy people. Their sour mood in the wake of the Great Recession reflects growing disillusionment with the exceptionalism of the American Dream and a widespread sense that the United States is in decline. The perceived fall from greatness, and who is to blame for it, are already shaping up as major themes for the 2012 campaign.

"Many in Washington--including the president--are really arguing over how best to manage the decline of our nation," Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., the House Budget Committee chairman, charged in an early salvo last month.


But a very narrow set of objective economic indicators will fuel much of the debate over the United States' stature: annual growth of the gross domestic product, unemployment, and overall wealth. As it happens, the country's performance based on these metrics is remarkably good compared with other major industrial nations. Although the public gloom reflects doggedly high unemployment, it doesn't fully explain the broader sense of a national slide in stature. Looking at a wider array of measures about the quality of life may better explain that uneasiness.

One early version of such a tool now exists, just in time to help frame--and perhaps inform--the 2012 election debate about American exceptionalism.

In late May, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the Paris-based think tank supported by 34 industrialized nations, released its first-ever Your Better Life Index. The interactive database compares member countries along 11 separate lines, from indicators of wealth and income to measures of health, education, personal fulfillment, and leisure time. The goal, OECD officials say, is to help people identify their preferences and encourage public debates within countries about the broadest meaning of well-being.

"People around the world have wanted to go beyond GDP for some time," the organization's secretary-general, Angel Gurria, said. "This index is designed for them. It has extraordinary potential to help people help us deliver better policies for better lives."

AMERICA IN DECLINE'
... The U.S. economy is still the largest and wealthiest in the industrialized world. Relative to Europe and Japan, the United States is recovering quite well from the Great Recession. The International Monetary Fund expects America's economy to grow 2.8 percent this year, much better than the 1.8 percent expansion that the IMF forecasts for the European Union or the 1.4 percent it foresees in Japan. The U.S. is likely to outperform both of those economic rivals at least through 2016. Moreover, America ranks first in global competitiveness, up from third last year, in the International Institute for Management Development's annual ranking of nations' economic performance. That determination is based on an array of measures that include public finances, productivity, education, and basic infrastructure.

Nevertheless, China's economy is now expected to be larger than America's by 2016, thanks to years of stronger growth. The IMF foresees unemployment in the United States averaging 8.5 percent through 2011, about 2 points higher than joblessness in Germany and 4 points higher than in Japan. The U.S. government's deficit will remain close to 11 percent of the economy, higher than that of Japan and more than four times that of Germany. On its current trajectory, the federal debt will equal 90 percent or more of U.S. gross domestic policy by 2020, many analysts predict.


Given the trauma of the past several years, it's not a surprise that many Americans embrace a declinist worldview rather than an exceptionalist vision. In a November 2010 Allstate/National Journal Heartland Monitor poll, only 20 percent of Americans thought that the United States had the world's strongest economy. More than twice as many, 47 percent, picked China. Asked which nation will have the best economy two decades from now, 37 percent chose China and 34 percent the United States. In the latest Heartland Monitor survey, taken last month, 58 percent of Americans thought that the country was on the wrong track. (See "Race to the Top.")

In terms of its raw economic size and wealth, the United States is still No. 1. But America is doing poorly in managing its finances and creating jobs, a fact not lost on its citizens.

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

Money isn't everything, of course, and purely economic metrics are, at best, limited indicators of national well-being. Just ask any Washingtonian stuck on the Capital Beltway at rush hour. Traffic jams increase gasoline consumption, which shows up in economic data as a plus for the GDP, but they obviously don't improve the quality of life. Ill health can have the same effect, with increased spending and "production" of medical services reflected as a positive for the economy.

If your only interest is earning money, for example, you might assign a maximum weighting of 5 to "income" and a zero to everything else. By that measure, the U.S. comes out solidly on top, after the city-state of Luxembourg. If your primary interest is joy of life, by contrast, you might place the greatest weight to surveys of "life satisfaction," "life-work balance," and perhaps "community." That would put Denmark at No. 1, followed closely by most other Western European countries, as well as Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. The United States ranks 17th. Put another way, America is a good place to make money, but it's not as much fun or as fulfilling to live there as in a lot of other countries.

The Better Life Index has clear shortcomings. It has no measure for inequality, despite a rising gap between the rich and the poor in the United States and in a number of other major economies. Human happiness is relative. It is not just a function of how people are doing, but how their lives stack up against those of their peers.

Moreover, the index has no indicator of environmental sustainability, such as carbon emissions or rates of natural-resource depletion that would link a nation's economic growth to the Earth's carrying capacity. Strong economic performance at the expense of future generations may create a better life for those living today, but be regretted by those alive tomorrow.

And the index itself is also built with limited statistical indicators. The environmental component is based solely on particular matter in the air of cities. The health component is based only on life expectancy and self-reported health.

' Income. As might be expected of the world's richest country, Americans enjoy the most disposable household income and have the greatest household financial wealth among the nations that make up the OECD index. Only the residents of tiny Luxembourg are better off, but that country has fewer people and a lower average household income then San Diego County.

Based on these economic metrics, Americans still top the list. At nearly $38,000 annually, after adjusting for purchasing power, Americans' after-tax income is two-thirds higher than the OECD average and outpaces the second-place Norwegians' income by more than $8,000 a year. Americans are also wealthier, on average, than their counterparts in every other OECD country. Adjusted for purchasing power, the average U.S. household has $98,000--about $5,000 more than the second-place Swiss.

Income and wealth indisputably help provide many Americans with a better life, giving them access to quality education, health care, and housing.

' Community. Americans' sense of exceptionalism has long been rooted in their strong communities, a phenomenon recognized by Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America in the early 19th century. More recently, however, commentators such as Robert Putnam in Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community have lamented Americans' growing alienation. This theme has been picked up by politicians, who have called for policies that bolster families and communities. For their part, average Americans do not complain much about alienation. At the same time, there is nothing exceptional about Americans' sense of community.

As social creatures, people's well-being is framed by the frequency and quality of their personal relationships, which provide both emotional and practical support, such as job opportunities. Nine out of 10 Americans (92 percent) say they know someone they can rely on in a time of need, a percentage that is above the OECD average. Conversely, very few--only 3 percent--say they rarely spend time with family and friends, which is much better than average.

Nevertheless, if Tocqueville were writing about community today, he would find better evidence of exceptionalism in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and Scandinavia, whose citizens are more likely than Americans to have tight bonds with family and friends.

2. UK: The New British Christian Menace to the Jewish People.
UK BISHOPS COME OUT CLEARLY AGAINST ISRAEL
by Giulio Meotti

http://www.israelnationalnews.
com/News/News.aspx/151192
Extracts:
... now the entire Christian hierarchy in the UK, Catholic and Protestant as well, is part of the global battle against Israel.
There is a virulent animosity towards the Jewish state in the established churches in Britain, which promulgate inflammatory libels against it.
Recently Barry Morgan, the Archbishop of Wales, compared Israel to apartheid in South Africa....
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, spiritual leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion, joined the Church of England's General Synod, which voted to disinvest Church funds from 'companies that make profits from Israel's occupation'.
Archbishop Morgan said in a lecture on the relationship between religion and violence: 'Messianic Zionism began a policy of cleansing the Promised Land of all Arabs and non-Jews rather than co-existing with them'....
According to Canon Andrew White, replacement theology is dominant and present in almost every church, fueling the venom against Israel.
The revised version of 'Whose Promised Land'', a highly influentiual book by the Anglican thinker Colin Chapman, recycles the worst Christian anti-Jewish theology.

A Palestinian cleric, Naim Ateek, has an immense influence in contemporary British Christianity, not least through his Sabeel Centre in Jerusalem. Ateek's denunciations of Israel include imagery linking the Jewish State to the charge of deicide that for centuries fueled anti-Jewish bloodshed.

At the beginning of the XIX century, the UK Christian clergy was a driving force behind the Zionist enterprise, inspired by a brave interpretation of the Bible. A century later, British Christianity is one of the major producers of blood libels against the Jews.

3. Ireland: Interesting Article About Michael Collins.
'No wonder Michael was never caught: all the women wanted to hide him...'
http://www.independent.ie/
lifestyle/no-wonder-michael
-was-never-caught-all-the-women
-wanted-to-hide-him-2959803.html
 

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