Glenn Stewart Coles, 9251 Yonge Street, Suite 8-924, Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada, L4C 9T3
Text Box: What could you do with $20 billion dollars? Remember the old song ‘I’d like to buy the world a Coke’? When bought by the case, an advertised special for Coke in New York works out to 18 cents per can. With $20 billion dollars, you could buy 111 billion cans of Coke, providing 16 cans for every man, woman and child on the planet. It sounds like quite a party. In this week’s news, Saudi Arabia has decided to spend $20 billion dollars on weapons to protect themselves from potential attacks by Iran. The United States intends on making the weapons and selling them. I wonder who is getting sales commission. Come to think of it, there are a lot of questions to be asked. Who gets the contracts? Who owns those companies, or sits on their board? Who receives fees from those companies? Who is financing the sale? How are payments to be made? This deal is all about fear and money. Create the fear, and the money becomes available. Though there are countless other worthwhile projects that could benefit mankind, instead fear is used to motivate funding priority. I’m sorry that there are so many homeless people, but we have to protect ourselves from the bad guys first. The most unfortunate element of this sale is that it represents only a small portion of military expenditure. According to estimates, over $1 trillion (one thousand billion) dollars is spent worldwide every year on weapons and war. The largest spender in the world by far is the United States, whose military budget for 2007 is $626 billion dollars. That is more than the rest of the countries in the world combined. Internally, the United States allocates over 40% of collected tax dollars to war, either financing current efforts or paying for old wars. In comparison, only 5% of US tax dollars goes towards social programs. If all this money is being spent, who gets it? The United States is by far the largest producer of military arms and equipment, capturing over 45% of market share. The next largest seller is the UK, followed by Russia, France and China. American corporations Lockheed-Martin and Boeing are the largest producers, each realizing revenues around $17 billion annually from their military divisions. The Pentagon spends over $30 billion annually in research and development of military technology. The U.S. government is training soldiers in upwards of 70 countries at any given time. The United States supplied arms or military technology to more than 92% of the conflicts under way in 1999. This means that in many cases, the US is arming both sides in military conflicts, with almost 70% of weapons sales going to developing nations. The great military machine fuels itself by creating fear, conflicts and war. Is it coincidence that military contractors own controlling interests in two of the largest television networks in the US (NBC and CBS)? There are over 500 million small arms in circulation today, and most of these handguns are loaded with bullets. Our world is ruled by fear and money, and as a result everyone’s safety is reduced rather than increased. If we would really like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony, we must stop making weapons. We must stop creating wars, and we must stop arming those who intend on making changes through force. Instead, we must eliminate our fears, and insist that our governments find a new way. Unless we do, a lot more people will be killed. © Copyright Glenn Stewart Coles, 2007 First Published July 29, 2007

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With $20 billion dollars you could provide 16 cans of Coke for every man, woman and child on the planet.

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