Me in slide show

World's most peaceful nation among major weapon exporters

No nation in the world is advocating peace more than Norway. It has taken several peace initiatives in recent past to resolve conflicts. With only 4.5 million inhabitants, Norway is the 7th lasgest contributor to the UN systems. Noble peace prize winner is announced from Norway. International Peace Research Institute is also located in Oslo. Along with all these tremendous contributions to world's peace, Norway is now one of the world's 20 major exporters of war material. The growth of weapons export is 20 percent and US is the major buyer of Norwegian weapon materials. Isn't it interesting?

Source: Norwatch

We are in unpleasant heat

Since last of couple of days we are experiencing temperature as high as 32 degree, sun shining with temperature above 25 for about 8-10 hrs (though total daytime around 18hrs). Extremely hot inside when we close window of our house. Anyone can follow real time temperature of our place below.

No doubt, Norway is alway talking about global warming. Recently Norway hosted World Environment Day 2007 in Tromsø, a very northern city of Norway. Interestingly, prime ministers (present and ex) and some leaders visited there with private jets whose per capita carbon emission is very high compare to the normal air traffic. What an irony these people talked on evironments there.

So, situation is same here as it happened in G-8 Summit in Germany.

Tale of a Summit (G-8) in the name of World's well being

Fact sheet of World's poverty:

* Half the world — nearly three billion people — live on less than two dollars a day.

* The GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the poorest 48 nations (i.e. a quarter of the world’s countries) is less than the wealth of the world’s three richest people combined.

* Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names.

* Less than one per cent of what the world spent every year on weapons was needed to put every child into school by the year 2000 and yet it didn't happen.

* 51 percent of the world’s 100 hundred wealthiest bodies are corporations.

* The wealthiest nation on Earth has the widest gap between rich and poor of any industrialized nation.

* The poorer the country, the more likely it is that debt repayments are being extracted directly from people who neither contracted the loans nor received any of the money.

* 20% of the population in the developed nations, consume 86% of the world’s goods.

* The top fifth of the world’s people in the richest countries enjoy 82% of the expanding export trade and 68% of foreign direct investment — the bottom fifth, barely more than 1%.

* In 1960, the 20% of the world’s people in the richest countries had 30 times the income of the poorest 20% — in 1997, 74 times as much.

* An analysis of long-term trends shows the distance between the richest and poorest countries was about:
** 3 to 1 in 1820
** 11 to 1 in 1913
** 35 to 1 in 1950
** 44 to 1 in 1973
** 72 to 1 in 1992

* “The lives of 1.7 million children will be needlessly lost this year [2000] because world governments have failed to reduce poverty levels”

* The developing world now spends $13 on debt repayment for every $1 it receives in grants.

* A few hundred millionaires now own as much wealth as the world’s poorest 2.5 billion people.

* “The 48 poorest countries account for less than 0.4 per cent of global exports.”

* “The combined wealth of the world’s 200 richest people hit $1 trillion in 1999; the combined incomes of the 582 million people living in the 43 least developed countries is $146 billion.”

* “Of all human rights failures today, those in economic and social areas affect by far the larger number and are the most widespread across the world’s nations and large numbers of people.”

* “Approximately 790 million people in the developing world are still chronically undernourished, almost two-thirds of whom reside in Asia and the Pacific.” source 18
According to UNICEF, 30,000 children die each day due to poverty. And they “die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far removed from the scrutiny and the conscience of the world. Being meek and weak in life makes these dying multitudes even more invisible in death.”

* That is about 210,000 children each week, or just under 11 million children under five years of age, each year.

Now the tale of a Summit

From the 6th to 8th June, the representatives of eight of the most powerful states from the global north will be meeting in Heiligendamm, near Rostock, Germany. Without any legitimacy, they will be making decisions concerning global politics and, therefore, maintaining the state of the world, which for the majority of us means hunger, misery, war and exclusion.

AT THE G8 SUMMIT, POLITICS ARE CONCRETELY MADE AND COORDINATED; a politics in
which the interests of big business and financial investors are central.
Around the globe, the dramatic division between the rich and the poor is worsened;
accompanied by the widespread dismantling of social and democratic rights.
When the G8 talk about debt relief and aid programmes for the poor, they remain
silent about the fact that hunger, poverty and indebtedness are the result of
neoliberal, globalised capitalism. The politics of the G8 lead to the unabated
destruction of the basic requirements for human life, secures the access of a
few states to the majority of resources, and is ultimately imposed through
wars.

Cost of the Summit:
The cost to build only the security fence around the summit venue, hotels and resorts will be about 12,4 million euros.
The German authorities have mounted an extensive security operation, deploying 16,000 police to deal with the protests at a cost of 12.5 million euros (S$25.7 million). "The current official estimate is that our G8 summit in Heiligendamm will cost a round 92 million euros just for security." -- Birgit Schwebs, deputy leader of the Left Party in Mecklenburg-Western Pommerania's state parliament.

Cost of the previous summits:

* 2002 Kananaskis, Alberta, Canada, June 26-27: 300 Million Canadian dollars

* 2001 Genoa, Italy July 20-22: 225 million USD.

* 2000 Okinawa, Japan, July 21-23; 750 million USD



Source:
* http://www.g7.utoronto.ca/evaluations/factsheet/factsheet_costs.html
* http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Facts.asp#fact1