The Poverty of America

The Poverty of America
The disaster in New Orleans sheds new light on the nature of poverty in the rich world, according to Jeremy Seabrook.

Some commentators in America described scenes in New Orleans as 'reminiscent of the Third World.' They could not have been more wrong. This was an entirely 'First World' phenomenon: gun battles between looters and the National Guard, who operate a shoot-to-kill policy against predators, bloated corpses abandoned on riverbanks and sidewalks, or simply floating, unclaimed on the toxic flood - these are scenes which occur only in the lands of privilege.

This is what the poor of India and all the other hopeful countries of the world have been taught to envy and to long for. This is the supreme achievement of the richest societies the world has ever known; and it is the model, not merely preached, but actually imposed by the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the World Trade Organization and the governments of the G8. That they are in no position to tell anyone else what to do is the enduring lesson from the disaster which has befallen, not merely Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama, but American society itself, as it has demonstrated to the world its indifference towards those for whom the designation 'loser', 'no-hoper', 'failure' is applied as a stigma of moral, as well as material, incapacity.

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It has long been clear that the West could easily provide a comfortable sufficiency for all the people of its own societies, if it chose to do so. It does not, for the simple reason that the fate of the poor must be maintained, as a warning and example to all who might otherwise be tempted to drop out, to relax their vigilance, to withdraw from the competitive ethos that drives people on to accumulate.

It is not ambition that drives the creation of wealth but the coercive fear of this ghastly version of poverty, this human-made construct that creates outcasts of plenty, human scarecrows brandished at dissenters to urge them to conform with this, the American or Western Dream. An indispensable component of its promise of wealth and affluence is its threat of a desperate, contrived and brutal form of poverty, of which the poor of India remain, at least for the moment, still innocent.

http://www.newint.org/

America. Corporations are people...

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Corporations/Hx_Corporations_US.html

The Uncooling of America
The History of Corporations in the United States
by William Kalle Lasn
Morrow/Eaglebrook, 1999
http://adbusters.org/magazine/28/usa.html
(excerpted from Culture Jam)



The history of America is the one story every kid knows. It's a story of fierce individualism and heroic personal sacrifice in the service of a dream. A story of early settlers hungry and cold, carving a home out of the wilderness. Of visionary leaders fighting for democracy and justice, and never wavering. Of a populace prepared to defend those ideals to the death. It's the story of a revolution (an American art form as endemic as baseball or jazz) beating back British Imperialism and launching a new colony into the industrial age on its own terms.

It's a story of America triumphant. A story of its rise after World War II to become the richest and most powerful country in the history of the world, "the land of the free and home of the brave," an inspiring model for the whole world to emulate.
That's the official history, the one that is taught in school and the one our media and culture reinforce in myriad ways every day.

The unofficial history of the United States is quite different. It begins the same way -- in the revolutionary cauldron of colonial America -- but then it takes a turn. A bit-player in the official history becomes critically important to the way the unofficial history unfolds. This player turns out to be not only the provocateur of the revolution, but in the end its saboteur. This player lies at the heart of America's defining theme: the difference between a country that pretends to be free and a country that truly is free.

Because big corporations make big donations to Bushco and friends. Bushco rubs their back and they rub Bushco's....

Stoic holier than tho,puritan Work ethic, the pull yourself by yer bootstraps, spit on the homeless,welfare queen myth making,The compulsive buy shit you don't need to impress the neighbors lies,fear the poverty so bad you have no time for your loved ones and fail to demand LIVING WAGES..LIE America has been "built" Upon..Buiult upon the fearful toiling,unhappy poverty phobic wealthy obeying,backs of the have less and have nothings...

Horatio Alger DIED along time ago In fact HE NEVER WAS. The rich pigs would not stand for that kind of opportunity to exist for the poor and homeless in the real world.How else could they goad America into a life of wage slavery with the FEAR of not HAVING MORE!!

you never mince words, and I love you for it.

"getmeouttahere" Is what I scream every day I live .

Living in this reality is like fingernails across a blackboard 24-7

The blackboard is my heart and spirit

The fingernails the insanity of "natures senseless cruelty" you cannot" walk in balance" with a hurricaine..and mankinds tolerance of sociopaths and the sociopaths proclivity to do senseless sadism and our cultural tendancy twords a lack of justice and bad ethics on that shit on top of natures bloody teeth and claws.

Get me the FUCK outta here!!! Arrrgh! This reality is CRAZYMAKING bullshit that scars the soul!

The problem goes back to when the powers, beauties, and deep knowledges of the age-old women's traditions were supplanted by military-caste mystiques & the accumulation of heavy metals

From d.a. levy
"Really"
                     the police try to protect
                     the banks - and everything else
                     is secondary"


Keep it real
Keep it raw
Straight talk is what we need

Economic justice

It shouldn't be an issue. I guess W and Karen Hughes wants it to be an issue. They really don't like blacks.