Human Wrongs Watch

While politicians in rich countries have been rescuing powerful “market lord”–private corporations and banks that have unleashed the global financial crisis or strongly contributed to it– for the sake of receiving their ‘electoral blessing’, the prices of grain and milk in the drought-hit Horn of Africa have risen to record highs.

Imagine a big swimming pool, as big as the Mediterranean sea—2,5 million km2. Imagine 150-200 million people sitting on its edges (resident costal population); other 300 millions coming from abroad every year (tourists), and 2.000 big ships and oil tankers crossing its waters at any given minute –let alone industries and oil refineries.

‘Pakistan’s government should immediately end widespread disappearances of suspected militants and activists by the military, intelligence agencies, and the paramilitary Frontier Corps in the southwestern province of Balochistan.’

Extremists would have the best chance to take possession of Pakistani nuclear weapons following the breakdown of the South Asian state’s government, the U.S. Congressional Research Service concluded in a report in July, 2011.

South Sudanese population estimated in 9 million people, is overwhelmingly young, rural, poor and uneducated; only 4% of its vast arable land is cultivated; half the population does not have access to safe drinking water, and only one person in five uses a health-care facility in their lifetime.

When German Chancellor Angela Merkel decided to take a firm stand vis-a-vis Greece bleeding financial crisis, she was surly aware that black economy accounts as high as one-third of Greek GNP, that tax invasion amounts to 20 billion dollars a year, and that corruption is rooted everywhere, at all levels, particularly among political parties.

Europe has just confirmed what many reports have suspected for years — that EU member states are allowed (by themselves) to ship their radioactive waste -generated by its 143 nuclear reactors- to “third countries” to bury their highly dangerous material there.

The price of the U.S-led invasion and occupation of Iraq since 2003 —which is paradoxically called Operation Freedom for Iraq— is usually calculated in dollars. What about its human cost?

The following are just some facts about Iraqi youth and children according to UN reports:

In spite of U.S-led military invasion since 2001 to bring “enduring freedom” and democracy, about 50 women die in childbirth each day in Afghanistan; one in three is physically or sexually abused, and the average life expectancy of women is 44 year.

Politicians, pushed by the “ward lords”–the military, spend over 90 billion dollars a year, from taxpayer’s pockets, on nuclear weapons. This figure amounts to the UN budget for 45 years, and to 3/4 of the total annual sum spent on development aid. The U.S. alone spends over 50 billion dollars annually–enough to meet the Millennium Development Goals on poverty alleviation.