Digitations

*Europe will kick off the new millenium with a store of toxic nuclear fuel waste which load a 20-mile semi-trailer traffic jam. Germany has 38% more people than Egypt and nearly 12 times the global-warming carbon dioxide emissions from industry. *Gunshot deaths of youngsters in the USA outnumber US battle casualties in Vietnam (US under-19s killed by guns 1979-91: 50,000; US battle deaths in Vietnam War: 47,382)

Compiled from the Weekend Guardian column, this is a good book to keep in your toilet or to look up when you're preparing a talk or a poster.

*138,495 USers were shot by children under six years old in the 1980s.

*In 1992, 3,336 USers under the age of 19 were murdered with guns, and 1,429 usded them for committing suicide. *Russia's environmental disaster areas are nearly 20 times bigger ~ no, not than England's ~ than England. (Square kilometres of Russian disaster zones: 2.55 million (15%). Square kilometres of England: 130,000.

*Aerial bombardment is the Gulf war for oil was greater than that delivered by Britain's Royal Air Force against Nazi Germany.

Tonnes of bombs dropped on Germany by RAF during World War II:

970,369. Tonnes of bombs dropped on Iraq and Kuwait by US coalition: 1,080,000. Iraqi children estimated killed by typhoid resulting from destruction of power supply for water: 350,000. *In the London blitz (September 1940-May 1941) it took a ton of bombs to kill three-quarters of a Londoner; in the Gulf War, it took three tons of "precision-guided munitions" to kill an Iraqi child.

*Only 10% of humanity can afford to buy a car, while 80% can afford to buy a bike.

*Young Frenchmen do a total of more than 2,000 centuries of military training a year.

*The Soviet state used atomic bombs as excavators 116 times. *A forgotten landmine could explode somewhere every hour of every day for over 11,000 years. Unexploded mines buried across the world: 100,000,000 (high estimate: 200m)

*Peace? What Peace? between 1945 and 1976, 25 million people died in 133 wars.

*One recruit to an armed service recruiting office costs 4,296. *Fielding an equipped member of the UK armed services costs nearly six times as fielding a German one. (Cost per capita of Britains 646,500 regular and reserve forces: $131,183; of Germany's 1.35 million forces $22,934.)

The UK's arms-sales office in Indonesia costs more than all the UK's elected legislators. (Working-day cost of Indonesian arms-sales office: 338,000; taxpayer support for MPs on an average working day: 212,000)