Offensive figures
Each year, the Stockholm Peace Research Institute updates data on global military spending. Compared to the world's hunger figures, the money spent on arms goes from scandalous to insulting, especially for that part of the hungry humanity. Let's see.
Global military spending in 2014 was 1.8 trillion dollars. The world spent $249 per inhabitant of this planet on armaments. The United States allocated $561 billion, China 129,000 and Russia 70,000. These are the ones on the podium of the ranking. The military spending of the Spanish State has also been significant last year: $15 billion. In the latter case, EUR 368 per inhabitant has been used, while pharmaceutical expenditure has not reached EUR 260 per inhabitant.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), there are 805 million hungry people in the world. In 2008, a FAO summit said that investing $30 billion over six years – $180 billion in total – would solve the most serious hunger problem in the world. Then, someone remembered that the U.S. slimming treatment market only moves about 33 billion dollars. Americans spend $30 billion a year feeding their pets (dogs, cats…). At that summit, the rich countries committed themselves to allocating USD 12 billion to aid, a third of what was requested. But only one billion were actually delivered. In November of the same year, the stock exchanges and banks of those countries sank, and their governments were forever forgetting the famine that accompanied them. In a few months, on the contrary, $3 trillion was used to save the banks.
In 2001, more than 3,000 people died in a suicide bombing in New York. On the same day, 25,000 people were starved to death around the world, and on the next day, many more, and so on every day. The attack took place in the centre of the world and society was mobilized and those responsible for the attack were persecuted. Hunger, although it causes many more deaths, does not generate mobilization and, of course, does not persecute those responsible as if they were not. We live in the society of inequality.
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Gasteizko Errotako (Koroatze) auzoan izan diren manifestazio "anonimoek" kolokan jarri dute auzokoen arteko elkarbizitza. Azalera atera dituzte ere hauetan parte hartu duten partidu politiko batzuen eta beste kide batzuen izaera faxista eta arrazista.
In this frenetic and vertiginous world in which we live, the social changes that take place little by little seem to us to be sometimes imperceptible, irrelevant or insignificant. That is not the case, however, and we have to be aware of it in order to act wisely. An example of... [+]
