Poverty begins at home; Iraq.
Today's Independent made much of the fact that sections of the UN Human Development Report for 2005 (released yesterday) said parts of the US are as poor as the Third World, also pointing out gross inequalities (infant mortality - increasing overall - is twice as high for black children as for white children). So far at least, the US nationals don't seem to have taken much notice. But the Indie seems to think this report marks the start of a huge battle between the UN and the Bush administration.
Looking in the mirror is a little harder, but the Guardian has a report on what the HDC had to say about the sorry state of affairs here. It points out that inequality continues to increase - a stable trend since 1980 after Thatcher came in to office. It also mentions real-income stagnation for the poorest decile (saying incomes rose 0.4% between 1979 and 1990), but this appears to me to be a gross underestimation. When I looked in to this matter a few years ago, I found declining real incomes for the lowest 30% of earners since 1979 - declining more slowly since 1997, but declining nevertheless. It seems "New" Labour's commitment to halving child poverty by 2010 will not be met without seriously addressing these inequalities, the UN predicts.
In Iraq, the finalised draft of the constitution which will be voted on on the 15th of October will grant the proposed Kurdish and Shia regional governments "a degree of autonomy close to independence" writes Patrick Cockburn in today's Indie. Even though Sunni opposition may prevent it from being adopted, but it certainly looks as though some kind of regionalisation, and the independence the Kurds have sought for years is going to be the final outcome. This is quite a surprise for me. Before the war began, I expected one of the outcomes to be great efforts towards independence by Iraq's Kurds, which one would expect to inspire those Kurds in Turkey and Iran to push for more independence, and efforts to create an entity called "Kurdistan" which at the moment is little more than an aspiration. This, I expected, would be likely to cause serious problems for Washington's clients in Ankara, and might well lead to brutal repression by the Turkish and Iranian governments. If such problems were to be avoided, I anticipated serious violence would be necessary to quell the voices of the Iraqi Kurds seeking more autonomy (and they already had a considerable amount under Hussein, after 1991). What all this says of what's become of the US/UK plans for Iraq, and how these problems will be resolved remains unclear. We can only hope the politics of EU accession prevent Ankara from launching another bloodbath in Turkey's Kurdish region. Iranian leaders have fewer restraints, although pressure from the US might also serve to deter a violent response. But the problem will remain, and will have to remain somehow. I cannot believe the US/UK vision of the Middle East includes an independent Kurdistan. The desperate state of the mission to "rebuild" Iraq is becoming ever more obvious. The long term consequences are difficult to predict, but Iraqis are unlikely to come out on top.
Looking in the mirror is a little harder, but the Guardian has a report on what the HDC had to say about the sorry state of affairs here. It points out that inequality continues to increase - a stable trend since 1980 after Thatcher came in to office. It also mentions real-income stagnation for the poorest decile (saying incomes rose 0.4% between 1979 and 1990), but this appears to me to be a gross underestimation. When I looked in to this matter a few years ago, I found declining real incomes for the lowest 30% of earners since 1979 - declining more slowly since 1997, but declining nevertheless. It seems "New" Labour's commitment to halving child poverty by 2010 will not be met without seriously addressing these inequalities, the UN predicts.
In Iraq, the finalised draft of the constitution which will be voted on on the 15th of October will grant the proposed Kurdish and Shia regional governments "a degree of autonomy close to independence" writes Patrick Cockburn in today's Indie. Even though Sunni opposition may prevent it from being adopted, but it certainly looks as though some kind of regionalisation, and the independence the Kurds have sought for years is going to be the final outcome. This is quite a surprise for me. Before the war began, I expected one of the outcomes to be great efforts towards independence by Iraq's Kurds, which one would expect to inspire those Kurds in Turkey and Iran to push for more independence, and efforts to create an entity called "Kurdistan" which at the moment is little more than an aspiration. This, I expected, would be likely to cause serious problems for Washington's clients in Ankara, and might well lead to brutal repression by the Turkish and Iranian governments. If such problems were to be avoided, I anticipated serious violence would be necessary to quell the voices of the Iraqi Kurds seeking more autonomy (and they already had a considerable amount under Hussein, after 1991). What all this says of what's become of the US/UK plans for Iraq, and how these problems will be resolved remains unclear. We can only hope the politics of EU accession prevent Ankara from launching another bloodbath in Turkey's Kurdish region. Iranian leaders have fewer restraints, although pressure from the US might also serve to deter a violent response. But the problem will remain, and will have to remain somehow. I cannot believe the US/UK vision of the Middle East includes an independent Kurdistan. The desperate state of the mission to "rebuild" Iraq is becoming ever more obvious. The long term consequences are difficult to predict, but Iraqis are unlikely to come out on top.
posted by UK plc at 8:03 PM
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