"Where you live should not decide whether you live or whether you die."
- U2 "Crumbs From Your Table" from "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb"

It is hard to imagine the world any madder than it is at the moment, with individualism almost in complete control in the west. I wonder what will turn it around, maybe the only thing we can do is lead by example :Kahel(mikem)

The recently released UNICEF report on the State of the World's Children found that:
• One in six of the children on the planet was severely hungry. 
• One in seven had no access to health care.
• One in five had no safe water. 
• One in three had no toilet or sanitation facilities at home.
• 640 million children did not have adequate shelter 
• 140 million children, the majority of them girls, had never been to school.

More than 10 million child deaths were recorded in 2003, with an estimated 29,158 children under 5 dying from mostly preventable causes every day.

Twenty-nine thousand, one hundred fifty-eight. Under 5. Every day. From preventable causes.

The next time you're at a baseball, football game or rock concert, glance around and get a feel for what 29,158 looks like.

For the first time in history, there are as many underweight people in the world as there are overweight people: 1.1 billion of each.

Let's play juxtapositions:

Every 2 seconds a child starves to death/There are 1600 diet books in circulation in America.

Every 2 seconds a child starves to death/14 times as many people could be fed by using the same land currently reserved for livestock grazing (stop underestimating the power and impact of the vegetarian lifestyle).

Meanwhile, running parallel to all this poverty and starvation, the U.S. spends $1 million a minute on war.

One million dollars a minute . . . on war.

A million here, a million there . . . pretty soon, we're talking about real money. And what does this buy?

During the 1990s, for example, an average of 2,174 people died each day due to war. Nine of out 10 were civilians. Five out of 10 of those civilians were children. Whether killed by poverty or by war, they're being punished for crimes they did not commit.

Do the math: How much of our money was spent on war and how many children starved to death while you read this article? Anyone got a calculator?

The question on so many people's lips these days is: "Why do they hate us?"

Better question: How could they not hate us?

We give them an excellent reason every 2 seconds and a million more reasons every single minute. There are no innocent bystanders when your money, rhetoric, or silence supports the world's most powerful military and the corporate status quo.

I know I'm not the only one thinking how much this system sucks . . . but is it so hard to imagine better ways to spend that one million dollars per minute?

The UN says the basic nutrition and health needs of the world's poorest people would cost only $13 billion a year.

Thirteen billion dollars is roughly 10 percent of what the U.S. has spent on the war in Iraq so far.

Here's a novel idea: How about we stop blowing up babies in the Third World and start feeding them instead?

© IMperfect 2005