Parts of America as poor as Third World

September 8th, 2005 at 14:03 Björn Hallberg

(Agonist) And now there is a UN report to back it up. Sure to be trounced by the US elites, but the findings ring very true for those that have actually studied the issue in detail.

Parts of the United States are as poor as the Third World, according to a shocking United Nations report on global inequality.

Claims that the New Orleans floods have laid bare a growing racial and economic divide in the US have, until now, been rejected by the American political establishment as emotional rhetoric. But yesterday’s UN report provides statistical proof that for many - well beyond those affected by the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina - the great American Dream is an ongoing nightmare.

… the infant mortality rate has been rising in the US for the past five years - and is now the same as Malaysia. America’s black children are twice as likely as whites to die before their first birthday.

The report is bound to incense the Bush administration as it provides ammunition for critics who have claimed that the fiasco following Hurricane Katrina shows that Washington does not care about poor black Americans. But the 370-page document is critical of American policies towards poverty abroad as well as at home. And, in unusually outspoken language, it accuses the US of having “an overdeveloped military strategy and an under-developed strategy for human security”.

While the article does indicate that this is some sort of retaliation against the Bolton effect, like the 750 amendments, you don’t write a 370-page technical paper in a week or two. It’s been a long time in the making. And so the US is twice exposed. They have showed their hand in what kind of world order they would like to see and at the same time we have gotten shocking insights into the realities of US society and the price they pay for empire.

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