Survival for children Worldwide,
· 10.6 million died in 2003 before they reached the age of 5 (same as children population in France, Germany, Greece and Italy)
· 1.4 million die each year from lack of access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation Health of children Worldwide,
· 2.2 million children die each year because they are not immunized
· 15 million children orphaned due to HIV/AIDS (similar to the total children population in Germany or United Kingdom) source 26
The total wealth of the top 8.3 million people around the world “rose 8.2 percent to $30.8 trillion in 2004, giving them control of nearly a quarter of the world’s financial assets.†In other words, about 0.13% of the world’s population controlled 25% of the world’s assets in 2004. source 27
These figures all have source numbers which can be verified here: click here
Now we do spend a whole lot of time arguing the relative merits of one political party or the other, or one form of government as compared to another, or the virtues of one religion as opposed to another. We demand an end to the insane war for profit in Iraq and rightly so, we call for the impeachment of evil men we elected or were appointed. We argue about who will make the best Presidential candidate in the coming national election. I would think these important topics and issues. Yet how often do we stop and ponder the lives of the great majority of our fellow humans on this little blue ball of ours? When children are dying needlessly because we as a nation and as a world would rather spend billions killing each other, when ten million kids die before the age of five years old, so many of which are preventable deaths, mind you, while we spend 780 billion on the military worldwide I would posit that something is extremely wrong with us as a species. Would you?
