pmaitra
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Syria, Iran protected by selfish nations
LAURA MILLS, Associated Press
Published 02:31 p.m., Friday, July 27, 2012
LAURA MILLS, Associated Press
Published 02:31 p.m., Friday, July 27, 2012
Full article: Syria, Iran protected by selfish nations - SFGateThe nations like to say they bring a principled alternative opinion to the table. In fact, look at what they do and you'll see that actually they're totally self-interested. They don't seem to care about the rest of the world's concerns.
Who cares if Syrian President Bashar Assad continues slaughtering his own people? It's not our problem if Iran builds a bomb.
They look out only for themselves. But even at that, they're doing an extremely poor job. India, Russia and China have mammoth domestic problems that they don't like to talk about.
A few weeks ago, for example, Jairam Ramesh, India's minister for sanitation, acknowledged that his country is the world's largest open-air toilet. UNICEF's most recent figures, from 2008, show that about one-third of India's 1.2 billion people have access to a toilet, leaving 800 million people with no choice but to defecate outside. The World Health Organization calls that "the riskiest sanitation practice of all."
At the same time, India's economy makes America's look healthy and robust. Standard and Poor's sovereign rating for India is BBB-minus, just above a junk rating. And in recent weeks, ratings agencies have been threatening to lower it even more.
Right now, one-third of the population lives on less than $1.25 a day. Nearly half the nation's children suffer from stunting, meaning they don't grow properly physically or mentally because of malnutrition during infancy. That's one of the world's highest rates. So is the "wasting" rate: children who are essentially starving to death. That's 20 percent.
Shouldn't India be attending to all of that rather than expending energy on being a balky, brutish BRIC?