Liza
----------
>From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
>To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>Subject: Fwd: 10 troubling facts : 1999 UN Human Development
>Date: Thu, Sep 16, 1999, 10:32 AM
>
>[From the 50 Years is Enough list, reformatted by your humble
>moderator. I don't think I agree with Audre Lord's aphorism at the
>end of Njoki's sig file, but that's another story.]
>
>Date: Thu, 16 Sep 1999 10:01:45 -0400
>From: Njoki Njoroge Njehu <wb50years at igc.org>
>
>Toward Freedom Online Magizine Website
><http://www.towardfreedom.com/aug99/un_list.htm>
>
>What a World!
>
>Ten troubling facts from the 1999 UN Human Development Report
><http://www.undp.org/hdro/99.htm>
>
>1. One fifth of the world's people -- those living in countries with
>the highest incomes -- produce 86 percent of world gross domestic
>product, 82 percent of exports, and 68 percent of foreign direct
>investment. They control 74 percent of the world's telephone lines.
>The bottom fifth, in the poorest countries, produce about one percent
>in each category.
>
>2. Since 1994, the 200 richest people in the world more than doubled
>their net worth to $1 trillion.
>
>3. Rich industrialized countries hold 97 percent of all patents worldwide.
>
>4. The income gap between the richest fifth of the world's people and
>the poorest fifth increased from 30 to 1 in 1960 to 74 to 1 in 1997.
>
>5. Tanzania's debt service payments are nine times what it spends on
>primary health care, and four times what it spends on primary
>education.
>
>6. Women occupy more than 30 percent of parliamentary seats in only
>five countries: Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and the Netherlands.
>
>7. English is used in almost 80 percent of all Web sites, although
>less than one in 10 people worldwide speaks the language. Meanwhile,
>the number of computers with a direct connection to the Internet rose
>from under 100,000 in 1988 to over 36 million in 1998.
>
>8. Only 33 countries achieved a sustained annual growth rate of at
>least 3 percent per capita between 1980-96. During the same period
>during, per capita growth declined in 59 countries, mainly in
>sub-Saharan Africa and the former Communist nations in Eastern Europe
>and the former Soviet Union.
>
>9. Organized crime syndicates are estimated to gross $1.5 trillion a
>year. The value of the illegal drug trade was estimated at $400
>billion in 1995, about 8 percent of world trade, more than the shares
>of iron and steel and motor vehicles, and roughly equivalent to
>textiles, gas, and oil.
>
>10. Adult literacy among Brahmins, -- a group at the top of the Hindu
>social system in Nepal -- is 58 per cent and life expectancy is 61
>years. The figures for the country's Muslims are 22 per cent and 49.
>
>
>:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
>
>Njoki Njoroge Njehû (Ms.)
>Director
>50 Years Is Enough Network
>1247 E Street, SE
>Washington, DC 20003
>Phone: 202/IMF-BANK or 202/544-9355
>Fax: 202/544-9359
>Email: wb50years at igc.org Webpage: http://www.50years.org
>
>Class consciousness is knowing which side of the fence you're on;
>class analysis is knowing who is there with you.
> ----from a poster, source unknown
>
>"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor
>freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, want crops without plowing the
>ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean
>without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral
>one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but
>it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never
>did and it never will."
> -- Frederick Douglass
>
>The master's tools will never destroy the master's house.
> - Audre Lorde in Sister Outsider
>