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2010
JANUARY The first
group of 20 prisoners
arrives at Guantánamo
Bay, Cuba
FEBRUARY Facebook
founded by Harvard
MARCH Despite
university student
worldwide political
Mark Zuckerberg.
demonstrations the
The site now has 300
previous month, the
million active users
Iraq war begins
2002 2003
JANUARY The Euro is
JUNE Second Life
introduced into 12
launched by US
countries.
internet company
FEBRUARY Nasa’s
Linden Lab. By 2009,
Mars Odyssey space
MARCH Washington the virtual world has
probe begins to map
student Rachel Corrie 640,000 active users.
the surface of Mars
is killed by an Israeli
bulldozer whilst
acting as a human
shield.
As the first decade of the millennium passes, I ponder on
“Addicted to our cars,
what might have been. A visit to the website costofwar.com
is a sobering experience. When I was on the site, the counters
our gadgets and the latest
showed that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have so far cost
America $941,648,693,057. Almost one trillion dollars and rising
upgrade, it is hard to imagine
by $15million an hour. These numbers are difficult to com-
prehend. The money could have paid for 15m primary school us giving up our comforts.”
teachers, or built seven million affordable housing units, or
provided 270m people with health care. If that money had Terrifyingly, the financial cost of the wars on Iraq and
been invested in Iraq and Afghanistan, a modern society with Afghanistan are dwarfed by the cost of the financial crisis that
advanced infrastructure would improve the lives of millions. gripped the world in this decade. The International Monetary
Instead, all that money went up in smoke, with thousands dead Fund (IMF) put the total cost of the financial crisis at $11.9 tril-
and countless more lives destroyed. lion. This almost inconceivable figure includes the capital
The speech from five decades ago of Dwight Eisenhower, injections pumped into banks in order to prevent them from
American soldier, Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in collapsing, the cost of absorbing toxic assets and the guarantee-
Europe during World War II, and 34th President of the United ing of debt for central banks. The staggering total amounts to
States, often comes to my mind. “Every gun that is made, every around a fifth of the entire globe’s annual economic output.
warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, Some analysts have downplayed the crisis, saying the
a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are Depression of the 1930s was far worse for ordinary men and
cold and are not clothed... We pay for a single fighter plane with women. Other analysts have declared that ordinary peo-
a half million bushels of wheat... Is there no other way the world ple have yet to feel the true impact of the crisis. However, it is
may live?” worth remembering that the decade that spawned the Great
The dawn of a new millennium brought so much hope. Hope Depression was followed by the decade that brought the world
that humanity had learnt its lesson and would shed itself of the its bloodiest war with an estimated 70m dead.
burden of the 20th century with the two great wars that made it The negative narrative of war and economic crisis is matched
the bloodiest century in humanity’s history. only by the precipice we find ourselves perched on with regards
But lessons were not learnt. The new millennium was barely to the planet that sustains us all. Ten years ago, global climate
born when people who had forgotten all sense of humanity change seemed a problem of the long term. Yet, the past decade
committed the atrocities of 9/11 and left over 3,000 dead. The US has clearly shown us the repercussions of our industrialisation
and her ally Britain responded with two wars that killed over 50 and increased consumerism over the past century.
times that number. The melting of the Antarctic ice sheets and the recession ÿ
www.emel.com | emel magazine 23
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