Human rights and democracy in U.S. is questionable

By Heshmatollah Rahnama

TEHRAN - Ever since the rise of the Islamic Republic four decades ago, Iran has been under severe United States media attack, sanctions and threats. 

Philp Alston, the UN’s special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights has concluded that 40 million people in the U.S. live in poverty in 2018 and over 5 million lived in “extreme” or “absolute” poverty.

Among the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, the U.S. has the highest rate of youth poverty and infant mortality, no wonder, Professor Alston classifies the American society as the most unequal society in the developed states. According to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), for the majority of citizens, 80 percent, the U.S. is comparable to the Third World countries.

To reach this conclusion, economists utilized Arthur Lewis duel-sector model, the winner of the1979 the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. The model describes the U.S. as followings: the model explains the growth of a developing economy in terms of a labour transition between two sectors, the capitalist sector and the subsistence sector so as to analyze the different economy of each (dual economy) and its interconnections. The capital sector expands by absorbing unlimited labour supply in the subsistence sector. The marked feature of the capitalist sector is that this unlimited labour supply makes the wage in this sector constant, and the accumulation of capital is attained by the capitalists’ reinvesting all the excess of profits over wages. This capital accumulation by capitalists is the key to development in developing countries. The Lewis model also theoretically explains the existence of in equality between the rich and the poor (exploited worker and peasants); and economic growth in less developed countries. subsistence sector has no hand in politics and they cannot counter the small yet influential capitalist sector. The high number of prisoners, the wealthy public policy aimed at reducing wages, forms a society in which social and economic movements are low.

According to analysis of the three-year National Commonwealth Fund of 2017, the United States ranked last overall among the 11 countries for six consecutive times on measures of health system equity, access, administrative efficiency, care delivery, and health care outcomes. Despite having the most expensive health care system, the U.S. has the highest costs and lowest overall performance of the nations in the study.

Another unfortunate news is that in the U.S. every day 115 people die after overdosing on opioids. At the end of the 1990s, pharmaceutical companies began massive advertising campaigns to convince doctors and medical centers to prescribe non-addictive painkillers.

And the results of the over-prescription of antidepressants and ultimately consumer addiction, which provided good benefits to these companies. Authorities are trying to restrict the administration of these drugs through powerful lobbyists. Once again, the overwhelming interest in politicians' health influences the majority of society. The issue is not that there are no good drugs in the U.S, but millions of Americans do not have the power to buy good medications.

Some drug companies have been acting very unusually. They have been increasing the price of drugs without any explanation in recent years, for example, the cost of insulin has increased by 325 percent for people with diabetes, Lomustine, used for the treatment of cancer since 1993, has increased 1,400 percent, the anti-allergic Epi Pen, which was sold for $57 in 2007, has now risen to $500, and the cost of 30 cyclosurine capsules has risen from $500 to $10,800 for treating tuberculosis.

Life expectancy for U.S. residents has declined in the past three consecutive years to 1 percent decline from 1915 to 1918, given the fact that the country was engaged in the global war and the epidemic of influenza those years.
From 1990 through 2016, education ranking in the U.S. fell from 6 to 27, making it the worst education system among developed countries.  

In Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, prisoners openly face violation of human rights, or people like Gina Haspel, who was directly involved in the U.S. government's torture program, became the CIA director in the Trump administration. 

In the Black and Latin regions, police excessive force has declined. According to Boston University, the systematic killing of black men by the police represents a structural racism in American society, reflects in a judicial system against black communities.

Paul Butler, author of the book Chokehold: Policing Black Men, argues, “If the police patrolled white communities with the same violence that they patrol poor black neighborhoods, there would be a revolution.”

Americans make up about 4.4 percent of the global population but own 42 percent of the world's guns. The highest number of school shootings belongs to America. Since 2002, some 400 students, teachers, and school staff have been killed with guns. Trump and the National Rifle Association (NRA) insist the root of the problem is not guns but a range of issues such as mental health. 

Seventy five percent of the population demands more control over the sale of guns and firearms possession, but the demands of this overwhelming majority are being trampled by the NRA's demands.

The NRA is an American non-profit organization and lobby for gun manufacturers and owners. The organization says it has around five million members  who affect the election process. In the 2016 Presidential election cycle, the NRA spent almost $30 million supporting Trump and $5 million for senators like Marco Rubio of Florida.

Violations of the rights of ethnic and religious minorities, and the strengthening of fascist groups with direct or indirect support from the central government and some state governments has increased this century. This is a worrying scenario for millions of blacks and Latinos and other minorities in the U.S.

The most obvious violation of the human rights agenda is the departure of  the U.S. from the United Nations Human Rights Council. Undoubtedly, American politicians have been aiming to escape accountability for the massacres in Yemen and Palestine, the forced separation of immigrant children from their parents and other horrendous issue. 

Concern for Venezuela, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, which began in the last two decades under the name of human rights and democracy, resulted in aggression and violence. The U.S. military expenditures all told at pushing one trillion dollars annually. 
The U.S. military expenditure in 2019 is more than $ 680,000 million, which is more than the combined  budgets of China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, India, France, Britain and Japan. 

Even in economic freedom (12th in the world), or in GDP growth (147 out of 224 countries), such a rating does not exist.
The U.S. is a military system based on warfare, and humanitarian assistance is an instrument to promote chaos and create benefits.

But with the current international situation, what the world is experiencing is actually the slow collapse of a superpower. That's why the U.S. is trying to upset the Maduro government in Venezuela and control others countries in Latin America.