"The United States spends over $87 billion conducting a war in Iraq while the United Nations estimates that for less than half that amount we could provide clean water, adequate diets, sanitation services, and basic education to every person on the planet."
- John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, with this footnote attached:

"In 1998, the United Nations Development Program estimated that it would cost an additional $9 billion (above current expenditures) to provide clean water and sanitation for everyone on earth. It would cost an additional $12 billion, they said, to cover reproductive health services for all women worldwide. Another $13 billion would be enough not only to give every person on earth enough food to eat but also basic health care. An additional $6 billion could provide basic education for all... Combined they add up to $40 billion." -- John Robbins, foodrevolution.org (accessed Dec 27, 2003)

Another good quote from Confessions of an Economic Hit Man: "How do you rise up against a system that appears to provide you with your home and car, food and clothes, electricity and health care -- even when you know that the system also creates a world where twenty-four thousand people starve to death each day...? How do you muster the courage to step out of line and challenge concepts you and your neighbors have always accepted as gospel, even when you suspect that the system is ready to self-destruct?"