Drugs

World Bank president James Wolfensohn says opium cultivation has reached record levels in Afghanistan. Officials have calculated that drug production is back up to within 10% of its peak production under the Taliban and that the price of opium had risen from $100/kg to $500/kg. It is estimated that three quarters of all European heroin comes from Afghanistan. In addition, drugs are now a bigger earner for the Afghan economy than overseas aid: The drug industry brought in $1.4 billion last year, compared with $1.2 billion in international aid.

Religion and War

A Gallup poll conducted shortly before the invasion of Iraq shows that churchgoing Americans were more likely to support war against Saddam Hussein than Americans as a whole. Overall, 59% of Americans supported war at the time of the poll. However, the poll found those who attend church at least once a week favor deposing the Iraqi dictator by an almost 2-to-1 margin—63%. Support for war among self-defined evangelicals and members of the "religious right" was predictably even higher. Americans who never attend church or say religion is not important to them are more evenly divided. The overall picture is striking: The most outwardly religious president of modern times leads the world's sole superpower into military conflict, with the backing of the majority—nearly two-thirds—of the nation's "religious" citizens.

Sexually Transmitted Diseases

» According to researcher Radhika Sarin of the Worldwatch Institute, AIDS in the military has emerged as a new security threat to African countries such as South Africa, Angola, and the Republic of Congo, where more than four in ten soldiers are infected with HIV. Estimates by the U.S. National Intelligence Council suggest that 10-60% of all soldiers in sub-Saharan African nations are infected with HIV. In some South African military units, the infection rate approaches 90%, reports the Chemical and Biological Arms Control Institute. This is significantly higher than the HIV incidence in these countries' general adult populations, which runs from 2.8% in Eritrea to 20.1% in South Africa.

» The British National Health Service is experiencing a crisis caused by skyrocketing rates of sexually transmitted diseases. Cases of gonorrhea have risen 86% in the last five years, and those of chlamydia have doubled to nearly 10%. Syphilis is making a return, and the rate of HIV infection rose to its highest level last year.

U.S. Military Might

The Center for Defense Information reports that the U.S. military budget for the next year is $400 billion dollars—more than the next 20 countries combined. The next biggest spender is Russia, with an annual military budget of $65 billion. The total combined military budget of the largest European countries is $153 billion, of which $88 billion comes from Israelitish nations and the remaining $65 billion comes from non-Israelitish nations. According to the British American Security Information Council, U.S. military spending accounts for 40% of worldwide military expenditures. Just the increase in military spending for this year ($48 billion) is larger than any individual European country's total defense budget. Even though military budgets are only one indicator, these statistics highlight America's disproportionate military strength in the world.

Incarceration

Britain is now the prison capital of Western Europe, with an average incarceration rate of 139 per 100,000 residents in England and Wales. This rate is higher than that of even Libya and Malaysia. While Britain does not match the total incarceration levels of the U.S., China, and Russia, statistics show that its courts are far more punitive than those of Canada and Australia, and beat all those of its closest neighbors, including courts in France (jailing 85 per 100,000), Germany (96), and Spain (126). According to the British Home Office, an estimated 8.75 million people worldwide are in jail—almost half of them in the U.S. (1.96 million), China (1.4 million), and Russia (900,000).