Written by Mark Millar. Art by Bryan Hitch and Andrew Currie. Published by Marvel Comics. What is this comic about? : The Ultimates are superheroes as a military branch. The main characters are General Nick Fury (organizer and boss), Steve Rogers (Captain America, a World War II hero revived after decades in suspended animation), Tony Stark (Iron Man, a brilliant billionaire playboy who uses his suit of armor in order to contribute some good before he dies of a fatal brain cancer), Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne (Giant Man and the Wasp, a husband-and-wife team; he can grow to 40 feet, she is a mutant with the power to shrink and fly), and Thor (a radical-left activist who believes that he is a Norse god sent to Earth). The Ultimates is part of Marvel Comics' Ultimate line of comics, which re-interprets classic Marvel characters for a new, modern audience. Recommended Reading : The Ultimates is published monthly (well, officially) by Marvel Comics, and the first six issues are collected in The Ultimates Vol. 1 : Superhuman. For more information, go to Marvel.com.
| Topics : |
Black Officers Circa World War II World Trade Organization |
Foreign Aid Intimate-Partner Violence |
Panel from Ultimates #4 : World Trade Organization
Panel from Ultimates #5 : Foreign-aid budget.
Panel from Ultimates #7 : Domestic violence
All covers and panels are copyright Marvel Comics.Black Officers in the Military circa World War II (last updated February 8, 2003) (back to top) The highest-ranking black officer in the United States military during World War II was Brigadier-General Benjamin Davis Sr., though he never commanded any troops into combat and instead served advisory and investigative roles during the war. His promotion to general status came in 1940 for what some say were political reasons, but he was then retired and then brought back in his advisory capacity just as he was eligible to command white troops.
World Trade Organization (last updated: July 14, 2001) (back to top) To some, it is an international organization that promotes free trade and settles disputes between nations. To others, it is the most visible component of a conspiracy to undermine United States sovereignty, environmental protections, and/or development in the Third World. The conflict between these different views came to a head in Seattle in December 1999, when the member countries of the World Trade Organization met in an attempt to lay the groundwork for a new round of trade negotiations dealing especially with the politically difficult issue of agriculture. Protesters with different agendas but one common enemy took over the city, leading Seattle's mayor to declare a state of civil emergency, and the WTO talks ultimately collapsed without agreement on major issues. Founded on January 1, 1995, the World Trade Organization is the outgrowth of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), an international agreement that reduced participating countries' tariffs and set rules for trade. The original GATT was negotiated by 23 countries in 1946 and took effect in 1948. Countries then took part in seven more rounds of multilateral negotiations, using the multilateral setting to achieve and package tariff reductions that might have been impossible otherwise. These rounds grew in size, scope and length; the last round, the Uruguay Round, involved 123 countries, covered trade from toothpaste and genetic structures to telecommunications, and lasted seven and a half years from 1986 to 1994. Even broader in scope and has more formal mechanisms to create rules and resolve disputes, the WTO is an official organization that implements and enforces the GATT and other agreements. Whereas the GATT dealt mostly with goods, the WTO also covers services and traded intellectual property consisting of inventions, creations and designs. Under WTO agreements, countries cannot normally discriminate against trading partners. Countries must treat all partners as "most favored" trading partners, meaning that if a country offers a trade benefit to one trading partner it must offer it to all other "most favored" partners. Perhaps the most controversial aspect of the WTO, at least from some critics' perspective, is its dispute-settling mechanism. As members of the WTO, countries agree to settle trade disputes through the WTO's court-like resolution process instead of taking action unilaterally. Effectively, countries accuse another for having protective or discriminatory policies, and if successful in their complaint, the other country must change its policy accordingly. This becomes controversial because countries have different environmental and labor standards, and laws or rules promulgated for reasons not necessarily related to trade can be struck down in the name of free trade. Two cases in particular have caught attention in the United States. In both cases, pro-environment laws or rules were struck down as anti-trade by the WTO. In 1991, the WTO struck down a provision of the US Marine Mammal Protection Act that was designed to protect dolphins from tuna-fishing operations (dolphins are trapped in nets designed to catch yellowfish tuna unless the nets are specially designed to be "dolphin-safe"). Under the act, if a country exporting tuna to the United States could not prove that it met the US's dolphin-protection standards, then the US government would embargo all imports of fish from that country. The WTO ruled that the US could not ban imports simply because an exporting country had different policies; holding otherwise would allow countries to impose trade restrictions unilaterally. A few years later, Venezuela (and later Brazil) complained that the United States was applying rules that discriminated against gasoline imports. The US's Environmental Protection Agency had implemented a rule in 1993 that requires gasoline refineries to make cleaner gas; refineries were judged based on past performance and when past performance could not be determined, they were judged on 1990 data for all oil refineries. In May 1996, the WTO ruled that the US rule was discriminatory and did not fall within certain exceptions for environmental reasons. The United States adopted a new rule in 1997. These and other rulings do not necessarily mean that the WTO is anti-environment or anti-labor, but it does mean that pro-environment policies in the United States have to be designed in ways that do not overly discriminate against other countries. In the dolphin case, for example, the WTO upheld other provisions that required tuna products to meet certain standards before being labeled "dolphin-safe," thus allowing for a consumer-based approach that could accomplish the same goals more indirectly. Beyond dispute-settling, WTO decisions are made by the membership as a whole through ministers or officials. The WTO does not delegate power to a board of directors and reaches decisions generally through consensus and also by a majority vote based on a "one country, one vote" principle that gives the United States, France, and Zimbabwe equal voting rights. Within the WTO, some countries have formed formal alliances to have a more consistent and powerful position. Most prominent are the European Union (also known as the European Communities) and the Association of South East Asian Nations; some countries have also formed the Cairns Group to promote greater liberalization of agriculture policy. The WTO currently has more than 130 members. In order to join, countries have to make commitments to open their markets and abide by the WTO's rules and must negotiate with certain member countries such as the United States. That more than 30 other countries (including China, Saudi Arabia, and Ethiopia) are currently negotiating for membership says something about the benefits of WTO membership. WTO proponents say that developing countries benefit by having rights and obligations due to their participation; the alternative would be trying to form relations individually with much more powerful countries. Also, WTO proponents say that developing countries can take advantage of the obligations by using them as cover for imposing changes that may be unpopular and politically risky in the short-term. Sources: The World Trade Organization is on-line here. Paul R. Krugman and Maurice Obstfeld, International Economics: Theory and Policy (Fifth Edition) (Addison-Wesley, 2000). Stephen Dunphy, WTO talks collapse; no accord reached, Seattle Times, December 4, 1999. The Seattle Times' coverage of the December 1999 WTO protests is available on-line here; The Seattle Post-Intelligencer's is available here.
Foreign Aid (last updated January 7, 2003) (back to top) The United States has long given money to assist the development of smaller countries as well as to achieve its own foreign policy objectives. In 2001, the United States spent roughly $11 billion on foreign aid specifically contributing to the development of smaller countries (commonly known as official development assistance, or ODA), less than 1 percent of its annual total budget and about 1/30th of the United States' annual defense spending. Nevertheless, polls show that the American public greatly overestimates how much is currently spent on such development assistance and would support larger amounts than is actually spent. For example, a poll conducted by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) in 2000 found that the mean estimate for how much of the federal budget was spent on foreign aid was 20 percent and the mean estimate for what people thought more appropriate was 10 percent. President George W. Bush has proposed a measure which would increase the amount of U.S.-funded development assistance by 50 percent over three years, resulting in an annual increase of $5 billion by 2006, and would tie aid allocation to successful efforts to reduce poverty and improve economic growth. Bush has described such development assistance as not only moral, but also as a measure to ensure international security; his proposal to increase development is part of his administration's National Security Strategy, which was published in September 2002. The United States began giving foreign aid with the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe after World War II and to combat the spread of communism, and the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 then turned the focus of aid more towards less-developed countries. The level of overall aid has generally declined over the years, falling as a share of the United States' gross national income from 2 percent during the Marshall Plan to roughly 0.1 percent today.
- Development assistance ($2.5 billion in 2002). Funds here promote economic growth, agriculture, health, and democracy and humanitarian concerns. Countries receiving the most funds in 2002 here were Indoenisa ($74 million), India ($70 million), Uganda ($57 million), Bangladesh ($62 million), El Salvador ($60 million), Nigeria ($56 million), and South Africa (54 million).
- Economic Support Fund ($2.2 billion in 2002). Used largely to support Middle East stability as well as peace between Israel ($720 million) and its neighbors such as Egypt ($655 million) and Jordan ($150 million). Also used for trouble spots including Indonesia ($50 million), Haiti ($30 million), and Ireland ($25 million).
- Assistance for Eastern Europe, the Baltic States, and the former Soviet Union ($1.4 billion in 2002).
- P.L. 480 Title II Programs (programs to enhance food security and combat malnutrition) ($0.85 billion in 2002). The biggest recipients in 2002 were India ($86 million), Afghanistan ($40 million), and Peru ($31 million). Ethiopia received $140 million in 2000 and $103 million in 2001, but only $13 million in 2002.
- Operating expenses ($0.56 billion in 2002).
- International disaster assistance ($0.24 billion in 2002).
| 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | Total (2000-02) | ||
| Afghanistan | $14 m | $29 m | $69 m | $112 m | |
| Egypt | $728 m | $694 m | $655 m | $2,077 m | |
| Ethiopia | $180 m | $144 m | $59 m | $382 m | |
| India | $168 m | $136 m | $164 m | $469 m | |
| Israel | $949 m | $838 m | $720 m | $2,507 m | |
| Peru | $84 m | $84 m | $86 m | $254 m | |
| Russia | $193 m | $163 m | $158 m | $514 m |
| In Billions of U.S. Dollars (2000) | As % of Gross National Income | Per Capita | ||
| Denmark | $1.664 | 1.03% | $309 | |
| France | $4.105 | 0.32% | $71 | |
| Japan | $13.508 | 0.23% | 97 | |
| United Kingdom | $4.501 | 0.32% | $78 | |
| United States | $9.955 | 0.10% | $38 |
Intimate-Partner Violence (last updated October 9, 2002) (back to top) Intimate partner violence – violence committed against someone by his or her current or former spouse, boyfriend or girlfriend – is usually directed more towards women than men, but became less common overall from 1993 to 1999, according to a 2001 study by the Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics. In 1999, there were about six violent crimes committed against women by their intimate partners per 1,000 women; this marked a 41 percent decline from the per capita rate of intimate-partner crimes against women in 1993. Women were victimized in 85 percent of the intimate-partner violent crimes committed in 1999, and 74 percent of those murdered by an intimate partner in 1999 were women. Younger women generally were more likely to experience intimate-partner violence than older women; there were 16 victimizations per 1,000 women aged 16-24, and 9 victimizations per 1,000 women aged 25-34. As for murders, there were 2.1 murders per 1,000 women aged 35-49, compared to 1.6 murders per 1,000 women aged 20-24. About 10 percent of the intimate-partner victimizations between 1993 and 1999 were between male intimate-partners, and about 2 percent were between female intimate-partners. Sources: The Bureau of Justice Statistics has published several reports on intimate-partner violence. Intimate Partner Violence and Age of Victim, 1993-99, was originally published in October 2001 and is on-line here. Intimate Partner Violence was published in May 2000 and is on-line here.
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