|
Even after lowering recruitment standards,
Army falls short of May goals http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/08/politics/08recruit.html? Good thing they’re working on robots, eh? 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
Africa
President 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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