• Between 1991 and 1995, during the wars of Yugoslavia’s disintegration, over 150,000 people were killed, three million became refugees, and 20-40,000 women and girls were raped. This was called "ethnic cleansing."

• Burundi and Rwanda has suffered more than three decades of war since their independence. 

• In Rwanda over 800,000 people were massacred in a six-week period in 1994.

• From 1990 to 1995 there have been over 14,400,000 refugees and displaced people. 

• Above 1,290,000 have been massacred. 

• Nearly every woman who survives the massacre is raped. 

• Many of the 5,000 children born as a result of these rapes are murdered.

• After Papua New Guinea blockaded Bougainville, 5,000, mainly children and pregnant women, died from disease and malnutrition – 17 times the number killed in combat.

• World War I killed 8,500,000. 
• World War II killed 19,000,000. Hitler put to death about 17,000,000. Stalin was responsible for the death of between 20-25,000,000. 
• During the 20^th century between 167-175,000,000 were deliberately extinguished through politically motivated carnage. The human mind staggers to comprehend the degradation and suffering caused by man’s inhumanity to man.

• “In the toll from Democide [the murder of any people by a political system that habitually and systematically murders large numbers of its own citizens], possibly even more than 350,000,000 people killed at the high end or the range, we have experienced in this century the equivalent of nuclear war.” (R.J. Rummel, The Wall Street Journal, July 7, 1986)

• In the 20th century 175 million were slaughtered in the name of the “politics of organized insanity.” [Zbigniew Brzezinski]

Child Soldiers

• Over 300,000 people below the age of 18 are fighting in wars around the world. 

• Most of these child soldiers are between 15 and 18, but many are below age 15.

• Children are recruited because they are cheap, expendable and easier to mould into unthinking killing and acceptance of danger.

• Child recruitment is often by threats of killing, cutting off a limb, or other torture.

• Recruits are then usually asked to commit an act of brutality, such as killing one of their parents or an unwilling recruit, to “blood” them and psychologically numb them. 

• In many cases, after their first blooding, child soldiers live in a semi-stupor induced by drugs and alcohol liberally provided by their commanders to reduce their sensitivity to violence they inflict and suffer.

Nuclear Stockpiles

The world’s total of nuclear warheads in 2001 was approximately 19,000, down from about 50,000 in 1985 at the height of the Cold War.

Military Spending

Small Arms Trade Estimates

• 500 million small arms worldwide

• Annual trade amounts to $5 billion

• 20% of trade is illegal

Behind the U.S. worldwide presence lies its need for oil. U.S. oil consumption is 25% of the world total, and its imports 60% (and rising) of its requirements, much of it from the Middle East.

Drugs Trade

• The drug business is lucrative because of high demand in wealthy nations.

• Analysts estimate global illicit drug sales between $300 billion and $500 billion each year, compared with just over $300 billion in annual drug sales for the pharmaceutical industry.

• The global trade in illegal drugs is worth twice as much as the motor vehicle industry.

• The total value of the trade is unknown because it is illegal and street prices vary widely.

• In 1989 the major U.S. chemical companies sold 18.5 million pounds of chemicals to "front companies" in South America who in turn sold these chemicals to drug cartels.

• While 1 out of 40 persons in New York City is hard-core, nationally 1 out of 100 are hard-core users. The number of casual users is substantially higher. Is it any wonder the crime rate is spiraling? 

• Seventy percent of New York City’s drug users are affluent. 

• One thousand drug-addicted babies are born every day.

• Among the American workforce 24% of men and 13% of women aged 16-25 use illegal drugs, falling to 16% and 9% for those aged 26-34.

• Drug-related accidents and lost productivity costs around $100 billion a year.

• Drug-related crime cost the American people $46 billion in 1990.

• 10% of federal prisoners and 17% of state prison inmates say they committed crimes to pay for drugs.

• One in ten murderers in New York State say that their Marijuana use in the hours before the killing was a significant factor in what happened.

• 80% of those in U.S. prisons are high on drugs or alcohol when arrested, steal to buy drugs or have a history of drug and alcohol abuse.

• One in ten prisoners use drugs in jail, usually Marijuana.

Who are the wealthy?

Never has there been greater wealth, yet poverty is widespread and the gap between richest and poorest shows no sign of closing.

• Of all high-income nations, the U.S. has the most unequal distribution of income. Although the U.S. has the highest concentration of individual wealth among the nations (roughly 3 times that of the No. 2 nation, Germany), and a large middle class, the disparity gap between wealth and poverty continues to widen. 

• The top 1% now own more than the bottom 90%. 

• The richest 20% control 83% of the wealth; the bottom 80% have 17 %; and the bottom 40% just 0.3%.

• 45 million people in the U.S. are living in poverty.

One measure of growing disparities is the widening gap between the compensation of CEOs and the pay of employees.

• During the 1990s, this differential grew more than five-fold in the U.S. 

• CEOs made 350 times a much as the average factory worker in 2001, and sometimes were awarded lavish stock options, even as layoffs were announced.

• This “pay gap” is at least 10 times as large in the U.S. as in other industrial nations.

A World of Contrasts

• Each day 40,000 babies die of starvation in Third World countries while Americans spend over $900 million yearly feeding dogs and cats. 61% of Americans are overweight. 300 million are obese.

• Six countries can spend $700 million in nine days on dog and cat food.

• To satisfy the world's sanitation and food requirements would cost only U.S. $13 billion--what the people of the U.S. and the European Union spend on perfume each year. 

• Today’s world spends $92 billion on junk food, $66 billion on cosmetics and over $800 billion for defense expenditure. 

• The assets of the world's three richest men are more than the combined GNP of the world's 48 poorest countries.

• Nearly one in four people, 1.3 billion, live on less than $1 per day, while the world's 358 billionaires have assets exceeding the combined annual incomes of countries with 45% of the world's people.

• Throughout the 1990's over 100 million children died from illness and starvation. Those 100 million deaths could have been prevented for the price of ten Stealth bombers, or what the world spends on its military in two days!

• Effective debt relief to the 20 poorest countries would cost $ 5.5 billion - equivalent to the cost of building EuroDisney.

Global disparity is greater.

In spite of economic leveling, the average inhabitant of the world’s richest country is over 100 times wealthier than the average inhabitant of the poorest.

• Between 1960 and 1995, the disparity in per capita income between the world’s 20 richest and 20 poorest nations more than doubled from 18 to 1 to 37 to 1.

• The top fifth (20%) of the world's people who live in the highest income countries have access to 86% of world gross domestic product (GDP). 

• The bottom fifth, in the poorest countries racked with starvation, has about 1%.

Because economic inequality also rose within most countries, the gap between those at the top and those at the bottom is even more pronounced.

• The infant mortality rate in low-income countries is 13 times the rate in high-income countries.

• With just 36% of the global population, Africa and Southeast Asia account for 75% of deaths worldwide from infectious diseases due to lack of clean water, sanitation, affordable medicines, and nutritious food.

• Risks of poverty are responsible for up to 6 million deaths annually.

• Without enough money to buy food, some 815 million people worldwide are chronically hungry.

• Lack of clean water or sanitation kills 1.7 million people each year – 90% of them children – and indoor smoke from heating and cooking fuels causes 1.6 million deaths.

U.S. Debt 2004 – $7,524,963,287,269.27

·        The estimated population of the United States is 294,947,881 so each citizen's share of this debt is $25,522.90.

·        The National Debt has continued to increase an average of $1.74 billion per day since September 30, 2003!

Debt and Aid

·        Outstanding consumer credit debts have increased from $349.4 billion in 1980 to $3,996 billion in 2003.

·        In 2000, developing countries’ debts amounted to nearly $2,000 billion.

·        The poorer countries of the world pay out more in interest on their debts than they receive in economic aid, most of which takes the form of low-interest loans.

·        Aid spending, as a percentage of GNP, is declining. The U.S. is the least generous donor, contributing just 0.01% of its national income.

• Although numbers of strikes in the U.S. rose in 2003, they were still low by historic standards. 

• There were 14 major work stoppages beginning in 2003, idling 129,200 workers and resulting in 4.1 million workdays lost. 

• The recent strikes at Northwest Airlines, General Motors, Bell Atlantic and U.S. West represent the biggest surge in major walkouts, affecting the entire fabric of economy.

• Labor strikes in Europe, unlike in the U.S., occur almost daily.