Migrating to the US? Think twice!

UN hits back at US in report saying parts of America are as poor as Third World, by Paul Vallely, Published: 08 September 2005 in the British newspaper "The Independent" is certainly given immediate validity by those of us who have watched the New Orleans and surrounding area tragedy caused by Hurricane Katrina unfold.

Here are some key comment points contained in this latest UN Report on World Poverty:

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

The annual Human Development Report normally concerns itself with the Third World, but the 2005 edition scrutinises inequalities in health provision inside the US as part of a survey of how inequality worldwide is retarding the eradication of poverty.

It reveals that 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.......

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".

"There is an urgent need to develop a collective security framework that goes beyond military responses to terrorism," it continues. " Poverty and social breakdown are core components of the global security threat.".......

India and China, the UN says, have been very successful in wealth creation but have not enabled the poor to share in the process.....

Blacks in Washington DC have a higher infant death rate than people in the Indian state of Kerala.

More important, it is not only in poverty that US is in tandem with the Third World - it matches it also in being a Banana Republic filled with corrupt or compliant politicians who care a damn whhether or not their constituents are drowned in water, blood or debt.