There are few things that make my blood boil more than reports issued by a certain group.

The organization, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, is actually a favorite of mine, and the work it does on tracking global arms spending is extremely important. But reading its research gets me all upset.

Its latest study is having the same effect. In a report issued this week, the think tank reveals that weapons peddlers were merrily unaffected by the Great Recession. Quite to the contrary. While governments around the world were cutting essential services to their people by offering up the economic crisis as an excuse, they were simultaneously gobbling up arms on the international bazaar. The result: At a time when people have been hurting everywhere, weapons purchases increased globally by a whopping 22 percent in the past five years (2005-2009) as compared to the previous five-year period.

The United States is the biggest merchant of death, accounting for almost one-third of the sales, with Russia close behind, having nearly one-fourth of the total.

“The USA delivered weapons to seventy countries and to NATO in the period 2005–2009, more than any other supplier,” says the report. “Asia and Oceania accounted for most U.S. deliveries (39 per cent), followed by the Middle East (36 percent) and Europe (18 per cent). Combat aircraft and associated weapons and components accounted for 48 per cent of the volume of U.S. deliveries of major conventional weapons during this period.”

This isn’t that surprising. After all, as Thom Hartmann remarked on his show recently, weapons-building is one of the few areas of manufacturing left in this country.

But why on Earth are countries buying up such junk?

China and India are the biggest culprits here, but the offenders are spread out all over. South America (an increase of 150 percent) and Southeast Asia (a near doubling) showed the most dramatic increases of any region in arms purchases over the past half a decade.

A maddeningly obtuse competitive mentality seems to be playing a part.

"Resource-rich states have purchased a considerable quantity of expensive combat aircraft," says Paul Holtom of SIPRI. "Neighboring rivals have reacted to these acquisitions with orders of their own. One can question whether this is an appropriate allocation of resources in regions with high levels of poverty.”

Holtom is being unnecessarily diplomatic. With intolerable levels of global destitution, official spending on arms is much more than a colossal waste of money. It’s a huge insult governments hurl at their own people.

Amitabh Pal is the Managing Editor of The Progressive magazine. To subscribe for just $14.97 a year, just click here.