Angry Post.

http://borgenproject.org/Defense_Spending.html

The World's Largest Military Spenders (billions)
United States $419
Russia $65
China $56
United Kingdom $49
Japan $45
France $40
Germany $30
Saudi Arabia $19
India $19
Italy $18
South Korea $16
Australia $12

How Big is it?
According to CDI, the U.S. military budget is more than 37-times as large as the combined spending of the seven "rogue" states (Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria).

I would like to point out at this time that they cannot afford to attack us. In other words, attacking sovereign nations in the name of defense is, as I have previously expressed, unnecessary. Especially since the last people who attacked us *coughnotIraqcough* were in fact from Saudi Arabia. This is an undisputable fact. Oh, and Osama bin Laden? Not in Iraq.

What is truly icky about this is that with the giant freaking military budget, these people still don't get paid squat, they don't have decent armour, and what armour they have they have to pay for if they get wounded and discharged. "Support the Troops" my hind leg. All those dang magnets are made in China anyway and are just another way for someone to profit from this mess. Whatever happened to tying a yellow ribbon? Or is that not cool enough?

http://borgenproject.org/Cost_of_Ending_Poverty.html

World Food Summit Figures
Incremental annual public investment needed to meet the World Food Summit
goal of halving world hunger before 2015.
• $5.2 billion: Ensure access to food for the most needy.
• $2.3 billion: Improve agricultural productivity in poor rural communities.
• $7.4 billion: Develop and conserve natural resources.
• $7.8 billion: Expand rural infrastructure and market access.
• $1.1billion: Strengthen capacity for knowledge generation and dissemination.
Total investment costs: $23 billion.
Estimated annual benefits of meeting WFS goal: $120 billion.

My response to these figures (which sort of turn my stomach, given how comparatively small they are) is that it disgusts me that we have so many people in the middle to upper classes whining about welfare and stuff when we spend

Four. Hundred. Nineteen. BILLION dollars on the military, and it would take merely

Twenty-Three Billion

To significantly reduce hunger. In the WORLD.

Does this bother/annoy anyone else? Anyone else at all? To know that if we'd put more emphasis on taking care of people's lives and needs instead of blowing each other to Hell and back all that time...it would actually work?

I've been told time and time again that the way things are are "just the way it is." "We lost perfection with Eden." Ok, except that this is not some mysterious cosmic thing here -- this is cash appropriation.

I now, more than ever, find the "fallen world" excuse just that: an excuse. Damn right -- we ate the fruit which gave us the knowledge of what's good and evil. Maybe we should USE that knowledge instead of cruising around with our hands covering our eyes and ears screaming "Fallen world! WMDs! Fallen world! We have to defend ourselves!" and pointing fingers at everyone except for ourselves.

I'm sitting on the seventh floor of the library on campus, which is the highest place on campus, and I can see probably about thirty miles in each direction. And I feel so blessed to be safe, and well-fed (perhaps a bit too well-fed) and to have the family, friendships and relationship that I have. And at the same time all of that makes me angry because it's by the grace of God that I have fallen into this life. It's by the grace of God that all of us have fallen into the lives we lead.

And for some reason, it's considered more important to blow up those less fortunate rather than feed them.