STWR - Share The World's Resources

Two years after the devastation of New Orleans highlighted racism and inequality in the US, the disaster continues. New Orleans' health care and education systems are still in crisis. Thousands of units of public housing sit empty.  Nearly half the city's population remains displaced.  A report released this week by the Institute for Southern Studies reveals that, out of $116 billion in federal Katrina funds allocated, less than 30% has gone towards long-term rebuilding -- and half of that 30% remains unspent.

The date has come round again, and in search of a fresh feelgood headline, national statisticians are reporting vast numbers in the news, indicating hugely increased percentages of returned population for New Orleans. They do this from afar, reading computer readouts compiled by other distant creators of factoids.

Pick up the paper any day and you’ll find tiny straws in the wind (or headlines inside the fold) reflecting the seeping away of American power. The President of the planet’s “sole superpower” and his top diplomats and commanders have been denouncing Iran for months as the evil hand behind American disaster in Iraq as well as Afghanistan.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States stood tall — militarily invincible, economically unrivalled, diplomatically uncontestable, and the dominating force on information channels worldwide. The next century was to be the true “American century,” with the rest of the world molding itself in the image of the sole superpower.

In March 1947, US President Harry Truman was preparing to launch a major foreign policy orientation that would define US foreign policy in the post Second World War era and beyond. It was based on active American involvement in world affairs for the purpose of containing, by force if necessary, the spread of communism around the world.

Economic discussion in the United States is trapped in ancient ruts. Both right and left are stuck in old habitual ways of thinking. Neither shows inclination or ability to think independently of ideology. For a country beset with economic problems, this is problematic.