|
On the one
hand:
Reuters: World military spending tops $1 Trillion in 2004;
US
leads the pack. World military spending rose
for a sixth year running in 2004, growing by 5 percent to $1.04 trillion on the
back of "massive" U.S. budgetary allocations for its war on terror. With expenditures of $455 billion, the United States
accounted for almost half the global figure, more than the combined total of the
32 next most powerful nations, said SIPRI,
which is widely recognized for the reliability of its data. In 2003, U.S. spending stood at $405
billion, SIPRI said. "The major
determinant of the world trend in military expenditure is the change in the
United States, with its 47 percent of the world total," the Swedish government-funded
institute said. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0607-03.htm And on the other: Crumbs for AfricaPresident Bush kept a remarkably straight face yesterday when he strode to the microphones with Britain's prime minister, Tony Blair, and told the world that the United States would now get around to spending $674 million in emergency aid that Congress had already approved for needy countries. That's it. Not a penny more to buy treated mosquito nets to help save the thousands of children in Sierra Leone who die every year of preventable malaria. Nothing more to train and pay teachers so 11-year-old girls in Kenya may go to school. And not a cent more to help Ghana develop the programs it needs to get legions of young boys off the streets. Mr. Blair, who will be the host when the G-8, the club of eight leading economic powers, holds its annual meeting next month, is trying to line up pledges to double overall aid for Africa over the next 10 years. That extra $25 billion a year would do all those things, and much more, to raise the continent from dire poverty. Before getting to Washington, Mr. Blair had done very well, securing pledges of large increases from European Union members. According to a poll, most Americans believe that the United States spends 24 percent of its budget on aid to poor countries; it actually spends well under a quarter of 1 percent. As Jeffrey Sachs, the Columbia University economist in charge of the United Nations' Millennium Project, put it so well, the notion that there is a flood of American aid going to Africa "is one of our great national myths." (From the NYTimes, June 8th, 2005) |
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