World's richest 1% own 40% of all wealth, UN report discovers

Thanks to the Guardian for covering this. Key statistics:

• Bottom 50% of population own less than 1% of global wealth.
• More than 1/3 of all global weath is owned by Americans.
• 27% of global wealth is owned by the Japanese.
• Top three per capita wealth; (1) $181,000 (Japanese), (2) $144,000 (Americans), (3) $127,000 (British).
• Study by the UN's World Institute for Development Economics Research.
• Total weath of the globe is $125 trillion ($125,000,000,000,000)
• Top 10% of adults owned 85% of all global wealth.

Democratic Senators Falling Down on the Job Again?

Democratic Senators such as Carl Levin from Michigan apparently plan to not question Robert Gates, President Bush's pick to follow Donald Rumsfeld as Secretarty of 'Defense*' on his past of apparently breaking U.S. law. This is discussed here on Democracy Now! this morning.

Robert Gates apparently was heavily involved in breaking U.S. law in the 1980's when he helped the CIA efforts to provide funds to the terrorist 'Contra Rebels' attacking Nicaragua by secretly selling U.S. weapons to Iran. According to Ray McGovern, former colleague of Gates at the CIA, new documents and evidence has emerged since 1991, the last Senate hearing Gates was subject to, that show his heavy involvement in the Iran Contra Affair.

Also, Senate Democrats like Levin and others say they will not question Gates about his producing false CIA intelligence reports, euphemized as 'politicizing intelligence,' because this is 'old news.'

According to McGovern, again, Gates was involved in producing false intelligence regarding the need to bomb the country of Nicaragua and also to mine its bays, which the U.S. then did and was then found guilty of - the only nation in the world to have been found guilty of a terrorist act by the International Court of Justice (read the judgment for yourself here).

What do you think, are Senate Democrats falling down on the job of keeping criminality, corruption and anti-democratic action out of the United States Government again?

*In my view, the Department of Defense should be properly called the Department of War, which it used to be called before 1947 and of course more accurately reflects the vast majority of its purpose and actions and activities around the world.