Okay...strap yourself in cus this gets depressing pretty damned quick... We all know this is the way the world works...but sometimes I reckon we need to stop and, by taking a long hard uncomfortable look, remember that this shouldn't be normal...
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The latest G8 proposals will mean around $2bn debt relief a year. US arms manufacturer Lockheed Martin made $17bn profit in 2004 alone.
The world spends around $6bn on education each year but spends more than 100 times that on military equipment & training.
The world's top 10 arms producers made more in profit last year than was spent in providing basic health & nutrition for the last five years.
To satisfy the world's sanitation and food requirements would cost around $13bn a year. The world spends that much on the occupation of Iraq every two months.
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Commeting on a lyric in his song "Call It Democracy" Bruce Cockburn says that sometimes the only appropriate way of commenting on an obscenity is with an obscenity.
In which case we're fucking disgusting.
In Sierra Leone the average life expectancy is 34...
...more on this when I'm finished my assignments.
[ If you were wondering what the Cockburn lyric is...
"North South East West
Kill the best and buy the rest
It's just spend a buck to make a buck
You don't really give a flying fuck
About the people in misery"
It's a great song and when Martyn Joseph sings it live it instills angry inspiration... ]
