Chapter 44

A typical city such as Washington D.C. in this way resembles the city we all live in, namely, the world city. In the middle of both cities there is an 80% colored slum and poverty, and on the outskirts we have placed the affluent white suburbs: Europe, North America, Australia, who own most of the industry and business inside the ghettos of Africa, Latin America, and Asia, but nevertheless refuse to pay taxes to this "city" although they take home huge profits from it.

Therefore Washington, like the world ghetto, gets poorer and poorer and it becomes necessary to send foreign aid in order to give back a little of what has been taken out. In the 1970's, areas within the capital of this affluent country were treated as hunger emergency districts. Today the city looks more like a civil war zone with drug wars unequalled outside the Third World.

Despite the fact that European countries give three to four times as much foreign aid as the US (Sweden, Norway and Holland give 0.8-1.0% of their GNP, the United States is at the bottom with less than 0.2% of GNP), most Americans feel that theirs is a generous country and therefore get offended by the anti-American anger of the Third World - just as they don't understand the anger of their own ghettos.

The ignorance reflected in their elections of presidents who often stand alone against all other nations in not admitting the need to give back some of the super profits derived from uneven trade, loans, under-priced raw materials, etc, is like their ignorance about their own capital beyond the beautiful tourist areas.

The crimes we fear from poor countries, such as kidnappings and terrorism, long ago became everyday life in Washington, which has had up to 2,000% more armed robberies a year than similar cities in Europe and 50% more murders than all of Great Britain.

One out of ten inhabitants in black areas of the city was reported a drug addict one year by Washington Post.
These two - addicts who first attacked me, but later invited me to stay with them - live only three blocks from Congress, whose white dome can be seen in the background.

Although the members of Congress dare not go on foot to their homes after work, they continue to increase military expenditures in a paranoid fear of the rest of the world, but make constant cuts in social and welfare appropriations.
Of what use is the bulletproof flak jacket  when death comes from the heart?

A month before I lived with these addicts, a cop was shot in their hallway, and a woman was murdered in this very room - the last glimpse she got of this stronghold of democracy and freedom.