United Nations Statistics – a tragedy for sure
While corporate globalization rules the world, hunger and poverty remain extreme. The statistics collected by the United Nations are truly staggering:
* Number of people living in poverty on $2 a day: 2.7 billion
* Number of people living in abject poverty existing on less than $1 a day: 1 billion so poor they live in garbage dumps and shantytowns, virtually without hope. Not surprisingly, 70 percent of the world’s poor are the most defenseless: women and children.
* Number of people who die every day from hunger: 24,000
* Number of children under five who die every day from preventable causes: 30,000
* 2.4 billion people live without decent sanitation, and 4 billion are without wastewater disposal.
Nuclear Arms Madness
Today at least 27,000 nuclear weapons are stockpiled worldwide, enough to vanquish civilization several times over. The U.S. and Russia possess over 90 percent of these weapons, including several thousand strategic nuclear warheads that are continuous a hair-trigger alert, ready for a launch in a few minutes notice. A report by the Rand Corporation declared these weapons could destroy both countries in an hour. Such a doomsday scenario could result from an accidental missile launch, an early warning system error, or miscalculation. There have been many close calls to a nuclear war starting by accident over the years; therefore, to retain thousands of nuclear warheads on a hair-trigger alert, only minutes from launch, is criminal, if not utter madness.
Moreover, conditions are worsening with the Bush Administration planning to install missiles for the anti-ballistic missile system (ABM) in countries that border Russia. President Putin has responded with threats to aim Russian missiles at nations accepting U.S. missiles on their land. In addition, Russia is threatening to respond by building a new series of powerful missiles.
Top Military Suppliers to the United States
Lockheed-Martin is the world’s largest weapons company so it is not surprising that all Trident missiles are built by Lockheed-Martin as part of its vast array of military products, including jet fighters. The New York Times reports that Lockheed-Martin had sales totaling $32 billion in 2003. The company is located in cities throughout the U.S., and has business locations in nations around the world.
The Pentagon’s Top 10 Prime Contact award winners for 2006:
1. Lockheed Martin: $26.6 billion.
2. Boeing: $20.3 billion.
3. Northrop Grumman: $16.6 billion.
4. General Dynamics: $10.5 billion.
5. Raytheon: $10.1 billion.
6. Halliburton: $6.1 billion.
7. L-3 Communications Holdings: $5.2 billion.
8. BAE Systems: $4.7 billion.
9. United Technologies: $4.5 billion.
10. Science Applications Int’l: $3.2 billion.
Source: AOL Money & Finance
Expensive War Machines
The United States Office of Management and Budget estimates total Pentagon spending, not including nuclear weapons or combat operations, for the period of fiscal 2008 through fiscal 2012 will exceed $2.3 trillion. These figures should help everyone understand that there is simply no business like war business as the permanent war economy has become a central pillar of the U.S. economy. While the U.S. now imports an enormous amount of goods, this nation continues to be the leading exporter of weapons around the world.
The cost and profit from manufacturing weapons is huge as the following examples reveal:
The F/A-18EF jet fighter: $95 million each The F-22 jet fighter: $338 million each
The F-35 Jet fighter: $112 million each
The B-2 bomber: $2.1 Billion each
The cost for one CVN-21 aircraft carrier is $11.9 Billion
The cost for each DDG-1000 (DDx) surface combat ship is $3.1 billion
The cost for each Trident II D-5 missile for the Trident submarine is $67 million.
The Trident submarine is the biggest killing machine ever built. This submarine carries twenty-four ballistic missiles, each missile capable of carrying eight nuclear warheads, each warhead over five times the power of the Hiroshima bomb. One Trident submarine has the destructive power of over one thousand Hiroshima bombs and can strike 192 separate targets. There are eighteen Trident submarines.
Some of the Top Military Spenders
The following figures are compiled for 2006 (or 2005 for some countries) by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI):U.S.: $419 billion
China: $62.5 billion
Russia: $61.9 billion
UK: $51.billion
Japan: $44.7 billion
France: $41.6 billion
Germany: $30.2 billion.
The United States accounts for nearly 50 percent of total world military expenditures and it is scheduled to increase over the coming years. The Center for Arms Control in Washington D.C. reports the Bush administration request on military spending for fiscal year 2008 is $481.4 billion, and, again, this does not include the cost of nuclear weapons or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
