Alligator with Deer in its Mouth

In 2004, an image surfaced on the Internet which claimed to show an alligator on Cross Lake (located near Shreveport, Louisiana) with an adult deer its mouth. The image shocked viewers as the lake is a popular spot for fishing and recreational boating. Other websites claimed the photo was taken on Lake Martin in Alabama or in South Carolina. In August of 2004, the U.S Fish & Wildlife Service announced in a press release that the picture was taken in South Georgia, near the South Carolina border by an officer who was preparing to ignite a prescribed fire. The worker was surveying the area in a helicopter. “The sight of a 12-14 foot (3.6-4.3 m) alligator is something that South Georgia folks see occasionally, but few have seen one take an adult deer out to lunch.”

A Friendly Whale

In 2009, cameraman Marco Queral captured some incredible photographs while diving with a 50 ft (15.25 m) female humpback whale in the South Pacific (near Hawaii). Queral has spent 20 years of his life photographing whales. He says they are “extremely intelligent, just like humans, they have their own mind and come with strong personalities.” The most famous image from the collection shows Marco Queral reaching out to make contact with the giant whale. It was taken by one of Queral’s diving partners and went viral in 2009.

The image has been spread around the Internet with a story that details an encounter between a whale and a group of fisherman near the Farallon Islands, which is 18 miles off the coast of San Francisco. In the story, a whale became stuck in a collection of crab pots, so the fishermen jumped into the water and cut the animal free. After it was safe, the whale returned to the men to thank them with a nose bump. The man who cut the rope out of the whale’s mouth said that the creature’s eyes were following him the whole time and he will never be the same. The news story is accurate, but it has been falsely attributed to the Marco Queral photograph.

A Steep Climb

In September of 2010, a collection of photographs surfaced on the Internet which claimed to show a family of bighorn sheep walking on the steep face of Buffalo Bill Dam, which is a concrete arch-gravity dam on the Shoshone River in the U.S. state of Wyoming. Many websites called the pictures fake because they were not taken at Buffalo Bill Dam. Instead, the photos show a group of Alpine ibex walking on the face of Cingino Dam, which is a gravity masonry dam located in Piedmont, Italy. After the pictures went viral in 2010, it was determined that the ibex were attempting to get salt from the stones.

Snake Grabs a Wallaby

In 2005, the Australian news outlet ABC Far North Queensland reported on a picture that shows a large olive python pulling a wallaby from the water. In 2007, the image went viral under the description that the snake was eating a cow, which is false. The olive python is Australia’s second largest snake species and they have been known to consume large animals. The snake in the photo is enormous and if you look closely it extends all the way off the right side of the picture. It is difficult to see the entire snake because it is so well camouflaged in the rock face. The picture was taken in the Kimberley region of Western Australia.

Bitterroot National Forest Fire

In 2000, the United States suffered a horrible fire season. By the month of August, over 4 million acres of land had been burned. On August 6, 2000, several fires converged in Bitterroot National Forest near the town of Sula in western Montana. As the blaze spread, fire behavior analyst John McColgan captured a remarkable photograph of the scene. The image shows a collection of deer watching the blaze from a river. In 2000, the photograph went viral and continues to symbolize the loss felt from the fires.

Kurt Wenner

Kurt Wenner is an artist with an international following. He is best known for his invention of 3D pavement art. At a young age, Wenner worked for NASA as an advanced scientific illustrator. He created conceptual paintings of future space projects and extraterrestrial landscapes. In the 1980′s Wenner first introduced 3D pavement art at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. He invented a new geometry in order to visualize his work. Over the years, Wenner has become internationally recognized and travels the world to work for high profile clients. The expansion of the Internet has helped Wenner’s popularity and many of his portraits have gone viral.

Plane Hits Truck

On February 4, 1976, a large earthquake struck 160 km (99.5 miles) northeast of Guatemala City, Guatemala. The area suffered extreme damage and most adobe type houses near Guatemala City were completely destroyed. The earthquake hit during the early morning (3:01 am), which contributed to the high death toll of 23,000 people. In June of 1976, National Geographic magazine published an issue dedicated to the earthquake. One picture in the magazine (captured by Robert W. Madden) shows a plane crash. The caption reads: “Buffeted by crosswinds, a rescue plane crashes into a truck, while trying to land on a mountain highway near Sanarate. Miraculously no one suffered serious injury.” Sanarate is the largest city in the El Progreso department of Guatemala.

Giant Grizzly Bear

In 2001, a collection of photographs began to circulate on the Internet that showed the body of a massive grizzly bear. Along with the pictures, many articles included a detailed story about the bear’s size and appetite for people. Some Internet sites claimed that human remains were found inside the bear after it was killed, but this is not true. In fact, the slain bear was shot in October 2001 by U.S. airman Ted Winnen, who was stationed at Eielson Air Force Base near Fairbanks, Alaska.

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Winnen encountered the enormous bear when he was deer hunting on Hinchinbrook Island, in Prince William Sound. It was reported that the bear came towards Winnen, so Ted shot it. It is unclear if the bear was startled by the men or if it charged them. Winnen measured the animal at 10.5 feet (3.2 m) from nose to tail. The weight was estimated to be between 1000-1200 pounds. The bear is an extraordinary large specimen for the Prince William Sound area (twice the normal size), but it is not a world record. Ted Winnen bagged the bear with a .338-caliber Winchester Magnum.

Living on the Edge

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In December of 2006, photographs were taken of a car accident that involved a close encounter with a 200-foot (61 meter) cliff. During the event, a man was driving his 1991 GMC pickup on Highway 59 near Hurricane City, Utah. While on the road, the man’s car slipped, he overcorrected, and plowed through a cement barrier. The vehicle left the highway, moved over a drainage culvert, did a complete 180, and landed 12 inches (0.3 m) from a 200-foot (61 meter) cliff. The truck ended up in the opposite direction it was traveling. In 2007, a collection of three photographs showing the scene went viral. In the picture, you can see in the upper right hand corner where the truck left the highway, moved over the drainage culvert, did a 180, and stopped next to the massive cliff.

Monster Pig

The history of the Internet is full of viral images that show giant animals. In May of 2007, a large domestic farm-raised pig was shot and killed by an eleven-year-old boy named Jamison Stone. The location of the shooting is claimed to be a 150-acre (60 ha) enclosure within the commercial hunting preserve called Lost Creek Plantation, outside Anniston, Alabama. According to the hunters, the pig weighed 1,051 pounds (477 kg) and was 9 feet 4 inches (2.84 m) in length from the tip of its snout to the base of its tail. Stone said he killed the animal with a Smith & Wesson Model 500 that had a mounted holographic scope and ported barrel.

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He fired eight 350-grain Hornady cartridges into the pig and chased it for three hours before it collapsed from blood loss. Several days after the story broke, suspicion mounted over the authenticity of the photographic evidence. Retired New York University physicist, Dr. Richard Brandt, used perspective geometry to demonstrate that the boy in the photo was standing several meters behind the pig. However, the Associated Press (AP) continues to keep the monster pig image in their archives with no mention of deception. Some other cases of viral pictures showing giant animals include Hogzilla, the camel spiders in Iraq, the giant catfish, Herman the giant rabbit, the huge eastern diamondback rattlesnakes, and the coconut crab.

Deer up a Pole

In 2004, a collection of strange pictures surfaced on the Internet of a deer that was discovered atop a 25 foot (7.6 m) tall communications pole. The photos were taken in Headingley, which is a rural municipality in Manitoba, Canada, located directly west of Winnipeg. Several people in the area witnessed the bizarre scene. The local media picked up the story and speculated that the deer was tossed up onto the pole after being struck by a passing train. Others insisted the event was the work of a prankster. Oddly enough, a similar mystery had been previously reported when a deer was found hanging in Delaware County, New York.

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Moose up a Pole

In 2004, a similar occurrence took place when a moose was hoisted 50 feet (15.2 m) into the air by construction power lines. The event took place on Pogo Mine road, near the Teck Polo gold mine, 80 miles southeast of Fairbanks, Alaska. Officers speculated that the moose got its antlers caught in a half-inch cable, and then was hoisted 50 feet (15.2 m) into the air when the cables were tightened with a hydraulic winch. Sadly, the 1,200 pound moose was still alive when it was lowered to the ground and then euthanized.

Anjana the Chimp

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Anjana is a chimpanzee that lives at TIGERS: The Institute of Greatly Endangered and Rare Species in South Carolina, U.S. Since she was young, Anjana has taken it upon herself to help zoo keeper China York raise young animals that have become separated from their families. In 2008, her story was reported by media outlets around the world when pictures of Anjana with a baby white tiger went viral. TIGERS founder Dr. Bhagavan Antle has said of the chimp: “Anjana has joined China in caring for baby animals. She has acted as a surrogate mother to leopards, lions, orangutans and white tigers. She gives them a bottle and lies with them. She is a great assistant.”

Spider-Man Lizard

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The Mwanza Flat-headed Agama (Agama mwanzae) is a lizard in the family Agamidae. It is found in Tanzania, Rwanda and Kenya. In 2009, a photograph of the lizard went viral after people recognized the similarity to Spider-Man. The male’s head, neck and shoulders are bright red or violet, while the body is dark blue. Since the picture became popular, the species has turned into a fashionable pet.

Military Use of Children

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Around the world, children are singled out for recruitment by both armed forces and armed opposition groups, and exploited as combatants. Approximately 250,000 children under the age of 18 are thought to be fighting in conflicts around the world, and hundreds of thousands more are members of armed forces who could be sent into combat at any time. Although most child soldiers are between 15 and 18 years old, significant recruitment starts at the age of 10 and the use of even younger children has been recorded.

Trafficking and Slavery

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Trafficking is the fastest growing means by which people are forced into slavery. It affects every continent and most countries. Currently, children are trafficked from countries such as Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sudan and Yemen to be used as camel jockeys in the UAE. Furthermore, Anti-Slavery International also has evidence that children are also being trafficked to be used as camel jockeys in other Gulf states including Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, and also internally in Sudan. The use of children as jockeys in camel racing is itself extremely dangerous and can result in serious injury and even death. Some children are also abused by the traffickers and employers, for example by depriving them of food and beating them. The children’s separation from their families and their transportation to a country where the people, culture and usually the language are completely unknown leaves them dependent on their employers and de facto forced laborers.

According to UNICEF, over 200,000 children work as slaves in West and Central Africa. Boys are usually sold to work on cotton and cocoa plantations while girls are used as domestic servants and prostitutes. In some cases, children are kidnapped outright and sold into slavery while in others, families sell their children, mostly girls, for as little as $14.

Internet Child Pornography

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The internet is a virtual playground for child predators. It is a place that operates largely outside of the law. While trading in pedophile pornography is illegal, lack of adequate funding means law enforcement officials are able to investigate just two percent of their leads. Also, according to Interpol statistics, only one-half of one percent are ever prosecuted.

On a show that aired September 2, 2008, Oprah Winfrey showed a map that clearly conveyed how fast one pornographic image of a child being molested can spread. From a computer in Washington, DC, the image spread within 24 hours, all across the United States. The demand for new images and videos is so high that authorities report they are tracking increasingly brutal pornography with younger and younger victims.

Child Prostitution

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In Thailand, NGOs have estimated that up to a third of prostitutes are children under 18. A study by the International Labor Organization on child prostitution in Vietnam reported that incidence of children in prostitution is steadily increasing and children under 18 make up between 5 percent and 20 percent of prostitution depending on the geographical area. In the Philippines, UNICEF estimated that there are 60,000 child prostitutes and many of the 200 brothels in the notorious Angeles City offer children for sex. In India as many as 200,000 Nepali girls, many under the age of 14, have been sold into red-light districts. Nepalese girls, especially virgins, are favored in India because of their fair skin and young looks. Every year about 10,000 Nepalese girls, most between the age of nine and 16, are sold to brothels in India. In El Salvador, one-third of the sexually exploited children between 14 and 17 years of age are boys. The median age for entering into prostitution among all children interviewed was 13 years.

Child Labor

An estimated 211 million children between the ages of 5 and 14 are working around the world, according to the International Labor Organization. Of these, 120 million children are working full time to help support their impoverished families.

There are millions of children whose labor can be considered forced, not only because they are too young to choose to work, but also because they are, in fact, actively coerced into working. These include child bonded laborers — children whose labor is pledged by parents as payment or collateral on a debt — as well as children who are kidnapped or otherwise lured away from their families and imprisoned in sweatshops or brothels. In addition, millions of children around the world work unseen in domestic service — given or sold at a very early age to another family.

Forced child laborers work in conditions that have no resemblance to a free employment relationship. They receive little or no pay and have no control over their daily lives. They are often forced to work beyond their physical capacity and under conditions that seriously threaten their health, safety and development. In many cases their most basic rights, such as freedom of movement and expression, are suppressed. They are subject to physical and verbal abuse. Even in cases where they are not physically confined to their workplace, their situation may be so emotionally traumatizing and isolating that once drawn into forced labor they are unable to conceive of a way to escape.

Child Neglect

Neglect is an act of omission, or the absence of action. While the consequences of child neglect can be devastating, it leaves no visible marks. Moreover, it usually involves infants and very young children who cannot speak for themselves. James M. Gaudin Jr., in “Child Neglect: Short-Term and Long-Term Outcomes”, reported that, compared with non-maltreated and abused children, neglected children have the worst delays in language comprehension and expression. Psychologically neglected children also score lowest in IQ (Intelligence Quotient) tests.

Emotional neglect, in its most serious form, can result in the “non-organic failure to thrive syndrome,” a condition in which a child fails to develop physically or even to survive. According to Gaudin, studies have found that, even with aggressive intervention, the neglected child continues to deteriorate. The cooperation of the neglectful parents, which is crucial to the intervention, usually declines as the child’s condition worsens. This shows that it is sometimes not that easy to change the parental attributes that have contributed to the neglect in the first place.

Parental neglectful behaviors include not keeping the child clean, not providing enough clothes for keeping warm, not making sure the child attended school, not caring if the child got into trouble in school, not helping with homework, not helping the child do his best, not providing comfort when the child was upset, and not helping when the child had problems. The prevalence of childhood neglect ranged from 3.2% in New Hampshire, United States, to 10% in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 19.4% in Singapore, and 36.4% in Pusan, Korea.

Lack of Access to Education

More than 100 million children do not have access to school. Of the children who enroll in primary school, over 150 million drop out, while user fees, including levies, are still charged for access to education in 92 countries and that such charges have impact on excluding girls. 77 million children worldwide are not able to go to school due to lack of funds. For socially disadvantaged segments of the population like poor inhabitants of cities, AIDS orphans and the physically challenged, any access to education is often particularly difficult to obtain. The consequence of this lack of access to education is that 15 percent of those adolescents between 15 and 24 in third world countries are illiterate.

Location often contributes to a child’s lack of access and attendance to education. In certain areas of the world it is more difficult for children to get to school. For example, in high-altitude areas of India, severe weather conditions for more than 7 months of the year make school attendance erratic and force children to remain at home. Gender also contributes to a child’s lack of access and attendance to education. In 25 countries the proportion of boys enrolling in secondary school is higher than girls by 10% or more, and in five; India, Nepal, Togo, Turkey and Yemen, the gap exceeds 20%. The worst disparity is found in South Asia, where 52% of boys and only 33% of girls enroll; a gap of 10%. Enrollment is low for both boys and girls in sub-Saharan Africa, with rates of just 27% and 22%. Girls trail respectively behind. It is generally believed that girls are often discouraged from attending primary schooling, especially in less developed countries for religious and cultural reasons.

Life as Refugees

Of the 50 million refugees and displaced people in the world, approximately half are children. War is the primary factor in the creation of child refugees. It is also a principle cause of child death, injury, and loss of parents. In the last decade, war has killed more than 2 million children, wounded another 6 million, and orphaned about 1 million. Children also flee their homes because they fear various forms of abuse such as rape, sexual slavery, and child labor. Circumstances of birth also play a role in depriving children of a legal home. Each year 40 million children are not registered at birth, depriving them of nationality and a legal name.

The combined ravages of AIDS and war have created a large pool of orphan refugees and displaced children, particularly in Africa. The toll of Rwanda’s civil war, for example, left orphan children to head some 45,000 Rwandan households, with 90 percent of these headed by girls. “Separated Children” are those under age 18 and living outside their country of origin without parents or legal guardians to care for or protect them. Every year, about 20,000 separated children apply for asylum in Europe and North America. Overall, children account for approximately half of all individuals seeking legal asylum in developed countries. Separated children are not often legally recognized as refugees in western countries. In Europe, for example, where there may be as many as 50,000 separated children at any given time, only an estimated 1-5 percent of those who apply for asylum are granted refugee status.

Poverty

According to UNICEF, 25,000 children die each day due to poverty. Around 27-28 percent of all children in developing countries are estimated to be underweight or stunted. The two regions that account for the bulk of the deficit are South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Some 1.1 billion people in developing countries have inadequate access to water, and 2.6 billion lack basic sanitation. Almost two in three people lacking access to clean water. Some 1.8 million child deaths each year as a result of diarrhea. For the 1.9 billion children from the developing world, there are: 640 million without adequate shelter (1 in 3), 400 million with no access to safe water (1 in 5) and 270 million with no access to health services (1 in 7). 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. 2.2 million children die each year because they are not immunized. Millions of parents in developing countries must daily cope with the fact that their children may not survive the first critical years of life; in many cases, the diseases that threaten their children’s lives are preventable.

Violence through Indoctrination

Palestinian children are taught to hate Jews, to glorify “jihad” (holy war), violence, death and child martyrdom almost from birth, as an essential part of their culture and destiny. As captured on an Israeli video documentary produced in 1998, a “Sesame Street”-like children’s program called the “Children’s Club” — complete with puppet shows, songs, Mickey Mouse and other characters — focused on inculcating intense hatred of Jews and a passion for engaging in and celebrating violence against them in a perpetual “jihad” until the day the Israeli flags come down from above “Palestinian land” and the Palestinian flag is raised.

In Madrasas, Islamic schools for study of pure Islamic religion, the culprits are the religious teachers; and the victims include helpless innocent underage students. The sacred teacher-student relationship is given a new definition in these Islamic schools. Following is the bitter experience of a 12 years old madrasa student from Kenya who was rescued during January 2003.

“It was a terrible place, they chain both legs and both arms, sometimes hands and feet together, They beat us at lunch time, dinner time and grab both legs and hands and give us lashes on the buttocks. We sleep in chains, eat in chains, and go to the toilets in chains. Sometimes we are hooked on the roof in chains and left hanging. We have to memorize the Koran and get punished if we cannot recite the Koran in the classroom”.

Chaining incidents are rare in Bangladeshi madrasas. Child torture incidents in madrasas are reported mostly in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Sudan. The number of students are estimated somewhere between eight hundred thousands to one million. They are often run by religious organizations and lure young children mainly from poor families by providing free food and lodging. Some of the schools even provide intensive political and armed training.

The World’s Most Important Issues

Here’s a shout-out to the college students starting the semester using my textbook International Relations. You will learn about many complex issues, trends, and theories. But keep your eye on some Big Issues that matter most. Here are five of them:

1. Global Warming. It is for your generation the greatest threat to humanity, a catalyst of international conflicts, and an issue that the international system has proven utterly incapable of solving so far. Global warming is the very model of a “collective goods problem” in that all countries will share the outcome but each one’s contribution to that outcome is made independently. If China and the United States keep burning coal (and they do), Europe, Southeast Asia, and others will pay the price even if they themselves act responsibly.

Within countries, where there is a government with coercive powers, the solution to problems like this is to force people to follow a solution, just like we make cars get smog inspections and repairs. The international system (a.k.a. “anarchy”) does not have that option. So we’re left with cooperative arrangements based on reciprocity, like the Kyoto treaty — you cut x amount of carbon, we cut y amount…  Without enforcement, and with long-term benefits but short-term costs, it hasn’t worked.

For decades, scientists have warned that global warming would lead to bigger storms, floods, droughts, and fires as the world’s weather system became unbalanced. Hurricane Katrina came and went, and lately we seem to have lots of these weather disasters. But a rising number of Americans, now about half, think the effects of global warming have been exaggerated. Congress certainly doesn’t want to pay to address it. And China still wants to keep growing at 10 percent a year.

As you learn about world order and the many structures of the international system, state-based and nonstate, think about this question: What would need to happen in order for the world to respond effectively to the problem of global warming?

2. The Decline of Armed Conflict: Another huge and underappreciated trend is the decrease in warfare in recent decades. The world’s states have not only joined the UN and agreed to work out their problems peacefully, they’ve actually stopped fighting. The remaining wars of the world, civil wars, are being gradually dampened, with greater effectiveness, by international peacekeeping.

What is it about the international system that has let countries deal with one of the worst, oldest problems of the human race, war, so much better than it deals with global warming? This issue is so important, it’s the subject of my new book, Winning the War on War: The Decline of Armed Conflict Worldwide.

3. The Arab Spring: Nobody knows quite why it happened — presumably the huge “youth bulge” in Arab countries’ demographics had a role, as did the spread of information technologies, and the poor economic performance of the Arab world. And nobody knows quite where it’s going — perhaps a democratic transformation of the entire region, or perhaps a bloody Shi’ite-Sunni war. But everyone knows that It’s Big!

This is the latest of the waves of democratization that have swept the world over several decades, touching Eastern Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Africa. Military governments are becoming rare, and authoritarianism seems to be endangered. Stay tuned for breaking developments this semester!

4. Palestine: Speaking of the Middle East, the Israel-Palestine conflict can seem like just part of the background music in world politics, but it’s actually moving toward a breakthrough or breakdown. The world’s longest-running major armed conflict (60+ years), Palestine holds tremendous emotional resonance for Arabs and Muslims whose countries are not even remotely affected by the conflict directly. It also shapes America’s standing in a world region where a lot of oil comes from.

Later this month, Palestine may bring its case to the United Nations. That has set off a flurry of activity either to support that option or come up with an alternative. In effect, the idea of a two-state solution (Israel and Palestine living side by side in peace and security) is on the line, with support eroding on both sides.

5. The Euro Zone:  Many of the benefits that countries enjoy in the international system come from trade and prosperity, no where more so than in Europe. The economic crisis that began in 2008, and has never really resolved, threatens those benefits. China faces the loss of export markets. The United States faces paralyzing stagnation. Most importantly, Europe faces the greatest test ever of its experiment in economic integration.

In particular, the euro currency — the world’s boldest financial experiment in history — is on the line. When it created the euro, the EU let individual countries control their own fiscal policies (taxation, spending), while centralizing monetary policy (how much currency to print). Right away it became clear that some countries, notably Greece but including big players like France, had cheated on the requirements of fiscal discipline needed before adopting the euro. Now Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, and even Italy are facing debt crises because they spend too much and don’t take in enough revenue. Cutting government spending in the middle of a stagnant economic period is politically unpopular and may not make much sense economically either. But that leaves Germany and other stronger, more responsible EU members holding the bag for the problems of Greece & Co. The Germans don’t want to pay for others’ problems, but don’t want to let the euro be destroyed either. Again, stay tuned.

Global Health Overview

This article looks at some global aspects of health issues, such as the impact of poverty and inequality, the nature of patent rules at the WTO, pharmaceutical company interests, as well as some global health initiatives and the changing nature of the global health problems being faced.

Despite incredible improvements in health since 1950, there are still a number of challenges, which should have been easy to solve. Consider the following:


One billion people lack access to health care systems 
36 million deaths each year are caused by noncommunicable diseases , such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and chronic lung diseases. This is almost two-thirds of the estimated 56 million deaths each year worldwide. (A quarter of these take place before the age of 60.) Breaking down the leading causes a bit further (there are others too),
Cardiovascular diseases cause about 17 million deaths
Cancers, about 7.6 million deaths
Chronic lung diseases, about 4.2 million deaths
Diabetes, about 1.3 million deaths
Over 7.5 million children under the age of 5 die from malnutrition and mostly preventable diseases, each year
In 2008, some 6.7 million people died of infectious diseases alone, far more than the number killed in the natural or man-made catastrophes that make headlines. (These are the latest figures presented by the World Health Organization.)
AIDS/HIV has spread rapidly. UNAIDS estimates for 2008 that there were roughly:
33.4 million living with HIV
2.7 million new infections of HIV
2 million deaths from AIDS
Tuberculosis kills 1.7 million people each year, with 9.4 million new cases a year.
1.6 million people still die from pneumococcal diseases every year, making it the number one vaccine-preventable cause of death worldwide. More than half of the victims are children. (The pneumococcus is a bacterium that causes serious infections like meningitis, pneumonia and sepsis. In developing countries, even half of those children who receive medical treatment will die. Every second surviving child will have some kind of disability.)
Malaria causes some 225 million acute illnesses and over 780,000 deaths, annually 
164,000 people, mostly children under 5, died from measles in 2008 (the latest years for which figures are available, at time of writing) even though effective immunization, which includes vaccine and safe injection equipment, costs less than 1 US dollars and has been available for more than 40 years.
These and other diseases kill more people each year than conflict alone.


Why has it got to such a level when the world has enough wealth to help address most of these problems, or at least alleviate more of the suffering?


This article looks at a number of global factors and issues around health problems.

War on Terror

It was with disbelief and shock that people around the world saw footage of the terrorist attacks in the US on on September 11, 2001 when the planes-turned-missiles slammed into the World Trade Center towers and damaged the Pentagon.

This ultimately resulted in the US declaring and waging a war on terror. Osama Bin Laden was eventually tracked down and killed some 10 years later. But the way the war on terror has been conducted has led to many voicing concerns about the impact on civil liberties, the cost of the additional security focused changes, the implications of the invasions and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and more.

It is now over a decade since the terrorist attacks in the US, simply dubbed “9-11” shocked the world, and ushered in a global “war on terror”.

And looking back, what has the US to show for its decade of effort? Has it been winning the war on terror? It depends how it is measured. The killing of Osama Bin Laden was of course a major success. But the cost of vengeance (instead of justice) has also been high:

A further turn towards hatred and a rise in those who think most Muslims are terrorists, that Islam is a threat to the world, etc.

Wars that have seen far more than the 3,500 deaths that the US saw, and a self-fulfilling prophecy; creating more anger and resentment against the US, more potential terrorists, and the complete opposite of what the neo-cons wanted; global downturn and US decline instead consolidating their power and position in the world.

Over 6,000 US soldiers killed in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Possibly 100 times that number of civilians in those countries (in Iraq, at an early point, there was an estimated range of 400,000 to 900,000 civilian deaths, which of course Bush had to reject, claiming it used flawed techniques, even though it used estimation techniques his own government agencies taught others to use).

And also worryingly, as Inter Press Service (IPS) correspondent Jim Lobe notes, Al Qaeda’s project for ending the “American Century” appears to have largely succeeded:

The rest of Jim Lobe’s article provides a useful summary of why Bush’s focus on Iraq (under the clearly false and fear-mongering excuses of weapons of mass destruction and links to terrorism), instead of tackling terrorism, was “perhaps the single-most disastrous foreign policy decision by a U.S. president in the past decade, if not the past century.” This is because it allowed the Taliban to regroup in Afghanistan leading to more expensive military operations and strengthening Al Qaeda’s resolve further. Meanwhile, various US actions in Iraq and elsewhere damaged its reputation around the world.

The above summary also matches concerns raised further below (in the section on Bush Losing the War on Terror) which was written quite some time ago, so it did not have to take a decade to look back and see a change in course should have been possible. But maybe the impact of the enormous cost this would have (US tax payers have had to fork out trillions of dollars) was somewhat unimaginable?

For many years even before 9-11, neoconservatives had called for the US to consolidate its position in the world as the sole superpower and dominate further. 9-11 appeared to give them an excuse to push these ideas further and their ideology permeated throughout top-level thinking of the Bush Administration. It is therefore quite ironic, as Jim Lobe also notes, that “leading the charge [for such an aggressive foreign policy approach] were precisely those hawks whose fondest wish was to extend, rather than cut short, Washington’s global hegemony.”

By framing this as a war on “terror” (which, as a concept can almost never end), an excuse is now afforded to all governments to put in place tough security measured on any potentially flimsy basis. And the predicted “war” on civil liberties and human rights has unfortunately proven true as human rights organizations around the world feared from the start of the war on terror (as discussed further below).

If the US public mood at the time was understandably full of anger and vengeance as well as shock and disbelief, it also reflects badly on US society that voices for more measured and appropriately calculated responses could be drowned out; an individual acting in a regrettable way due to a moment of anger is very different than an entire state apparatus (that should have time to think things through more thoroughly) doing that.

Maybe it could be argued that with hindsight it is easy to make these criticisms. Unfortunately, however, these concerns were there from the start, and re-iterated many times by many people and organizations during the past decade.

But not all have wanted vengeance. Many families of the victims of the 9-11 atrocity have campaigned for a more peaceful approach to combating terrorism, for example.

Accompanying this has been media propaganda, media manipulation, sensationalism, sound-bite journalism and all the various other problems that have minimized coverage of deeper issues and understanding while allowing various claims to go almost unchallenged. (Some examples and links are presented further below.)

The rest of the article below started shortly after the 9-11 attacks in 2001 and was updated a few times up to 2007. It barely covered any details but still showed these numerous concerns from so many people and organizations were already there and are still relevant.

Today, Around 21,000 Children Died Around The World

Some 21,000 children die every day around the world.

That is equivalent to:

1 child dying every 4 seconds

14 children dying every minute

A 2011 Libya conflict-scale death toll every day

A 2010 Haiti earthquake occurring every 10 days

A 2004 Asian Tsunami occurring every 11 days

An Iraq-scale death toll every 19–46 days

Just under 7.6 million children dying every year

Some 92 million children dying between 2000 and 2010

The silent killers are poverty, hunger, easily preventable diseases and illnesses, and other related causes. Despite the scale of this daily/ongoing catastrophe, it rarely manages to achieve, much less sustain, prime-time, headline coverage.

From UNICEF, the world’s premier children’s organization, part of the United Nations:

2.5 billion people lack access to improved sanitation

1 billion children are deprived of one or more services essential to survival and development

148 million under 5s in developing regions are underweight for their age

101 million children are not attending primary school, with more girls than boys missing out

22 million infants are not protected from diseases by routine immunization

7.6 million children worldwide died before their 5th birthday in 2010

4 million newborns worldwide are dying in the first month of life

2 million children under 15 are living with HIV

>500,000 women die each year from causes related to pregnancy and childbirth

The Arms Trade Is Big Business

Each year, around $45-60 billion worth of arms sales are agreed. Most of these sales (something like 75%) are to developing countries.

The 5 permanent members of the UN Security Council (US, Russia, France, United Kingdom and China), together with Germany and Italy account for around 85% of the arms sold between 2002 and 2009.

Some of the arms sold go to regimes where human rights violations will occur. Corruption often accompanies arms sales due to the large sums of money involved.

Every year, the U.S. Congressional Research Service releases an authoritative report looking at arms transfers to the developing world.

• Developing nations continue to be the primary focus of foreign arms sales activity by weapons suppliers though most arms are supplied by just 2 or 3 major suppliers.
• Despite the global economic climate, major purchases continue to be made by a select few developing nations in these regions, principally India in Asia, and Saudi Arabia in the Middle East.
• Saudi Arabia and India’s large spending reflects their modernization efforts since the 1990s.
• The strength of individual economies of a wide range of nations in the developing world continues to be a significant factor in the timing of many of their arms purchasing decisions.
• Increases in the price of oil, while an advantage for major oil producing states in funding their arms purchases, has, simultaneously, caused economic difficulties for many oil consuming states, contributing to their decisions to curtail or defer new weapons acquisitions.
• A number of less affluent developing nations have chosen to upgrade while reducing new purchases.

For arms suppliers, despite the impact the global economic situation has had recently on sales, a number of weapons-exporting nations have increased competition for sales, going into areas and regions they may not have previously been promninent. Competition between sellers will only intensify due to the limits for growth, Grimmet also notes.

Just ten developing nation recipients of arms sales accounted for 60% of the total developing nations arms market between 2003 and 2010:

Public Protests Around The World

The global financial crisis has spawned a global protest movement campaigning against things like inequality, corporate greed, lack of jobs, etc.

Although these protests have occurred for decades, they have typically been in the developing countries, or about the situation in developing countries.

As such, many Western nations, who have strongly influenced the conditions in developing countries, have typically not paid much attention to such protests, no matter how large (even the famous Battle for Seattle was more about violence than the underlying issues, for example). However, this time, the global financial crisis has hit the ordinary citizens of Western nations quite hard, and inspired by the Arab Spring and protests in Spain, a global movement seems to have sprung up.

Although these protests received some media attention (albeit negative), many protests had begun decades ago in the developing world with barely a mention.

Mass protests, throughout history have come at a time when enough of the population has been affected by policies of the rulers and elite. They have often been met with brutal, efficient crackdown by the guardians of the elite, be they local police, militias, national militaries, or even another nation’s military forces.

This page was originally created back in 2000, and updated a few times until the end of 2003. At that time, the context was the global protests at the current form of globalization marginalizing so many people around the world. Those protests were often against key institutions of globalization, such as the G8, World Bank, IMF and the World Trade Organization.

At the time, as large as some of the protests may have been, they were typically met with hostility from the intellectual establishment and mainstream media, typically from the West which was generally benefiting from the corporate-oriented globalization it was controlling and shaping.

This page has now been updated to include an overview of the protests on the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis, as there is a lot of parallel.

Poverty Around The World

Around the world, in rich or poor nations, poverty has always been present.

In most nations today, inequality—the gap between the rich and the poor—is quite high and often widening.

The causes are numerous, including a lack of individual responsibility, bad government policy, exploitation by people and businesses with power and influence, or some combination of these and other factors.

Many feel that high levels of inequality will affect social cohesion and lead to problems such as increasing crime and violence.

Inequality is often a measure of relative poverty. Absolute poverty, however, is also a concern. World Bank figures for world poverty reveals a higher number of people live in poverty than previously thought.

For example, the new poverty line is defined as living on the equivalent of $1.25 a day. With that measure based on latest data available (2005), 1.4 billion people live on or below that line.

Furthermore, almost half the world—over three billion people—live on less than $2.50 a day and at least 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 a day:

While poverty alleviation is important, so too is tackling inequality. Inequality is often discussed in the context of relative poverty, as opposed to absolute poverty.

That is, even in the wealthiest countries, the poor may not be in absolute poverty (the most basic of provisions may be obtainable for many) or their level of poverty may be a lot higher than those in developing countries, but in terms of their standing in society, their relative poverty can also have serious consequences such as deteriorating social cohesion, increasing crime and violence, and poorer health.

Some of these things are hard to measure, such as social cohesion and the level of trust and comfort people will have in interacting with one another in the society. Nonetheless, over the years, numerous studies have shown that sometimes the poor in wealthy countries can be unhappier or finding it harder to cope than poor people in poorer countries.

In the context of tackling poverty then, the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) for example sees poverty reduction as a twin function of

The rate of growth, and
Changes in income distribution.
The ODI also adds that as well as increased growth, additional key factors to reducing poverty will be:

The reduction in inequality
The reduction in income differences
A few places around the world do see increasing rates of growth in a positive sense. But globally, there is also a negative change in income distribution. The reality unfortunately is that the gap between the rich and poor is quite wide in most places. For example:

About 0.13% of the world’s population controlled 25% of the world’s assets in 2004.
The wealthiest 20% of the world’s population consumes 76.6% of the world’s goods while 80% of humanity gets the remainder.