'Unseen' News and Views – By Baher Kamal & The Like
Phoenix Express 2021, the AFRICOM-sponsored military exercise involving 13 countries in the Mediterranean Sea region, concluded last week. While its stated aim was to combat “irregular migration” and trafficking, the US record in the region indicates more nefarious interests.
At 32 million doses, Africa accounts for less than one per cent of the more than 2.1 billion doses administered globally.
Just two per cent of the continent’s nearly 1.3 billion people have received one dose, and only 9.4 million Africans are fully vaccinated.
$72.6 billion is how much nine nuclear armed countries spent on their nuclear weapons as the pandemic spread in 2020 and a global treaty banning nuclear weapons took full effect.
The report “Complicit: 2020 Global Nuclear Weapons Spending” details the spending of these nine countries on their arsenals, the companies that profited, and the lobbyists hired to keep nuclear weapons in business.
This amounts to $137,666 every minute, and (after adjusting for inflation) represents an increase of $1.4 billion from last year.
The U.S. spent three times more than the next in line- a whopping $37.4 billion.
China was the only other country crossing the ten billion mark, spending $10.1 billion.
Russia had the third highest spending at $8 billion, though the U.K.’s $6.2 billion and the French $5.7 billion weren’t so far behind.
India, Israel, Pakistan also each spent over a billion on their arsenals, while North Korea spent $667 million.
