Jeff Sparrow has written an article about the obsession with capital punishment in The Age, 1 January 2007. "Delivering convenient death shrinks all our souls". It starts out with a predictable question, along the lines of: "Why do people want to watch the death throws of Saddam Hussein" - which he refers to as "digital necrophilia".
But then, he switches tack, and comes up with these statistics - OK, he has borrowed them from "The Independent" in Britain.
"the Global War on Terror, ... according to Britain's Independent, has already taken the lives of 62,000 people, created 4.5 million refugees and cost the US more than the sum needed to pay off the debts of every poor nation on earth..."
There you go - they could have paid off world debt - but instead chose to fabricate a reason to invade Iraq - so that they could steal the resources of a sovereign nation. OK, not many people think kindly of Saddam, but he was as legitimate a ruler as many others I could name. And don't forget the Americans worked with him, when it suited them, (because of Iran).
It also shows that continuing world poverty is a choice made by powerful Governments.
The people who campaign to "Make Poverty History" must be spewing over these statistics.
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