Since the September 11 attacks, the U.S. government has put average Americans under intense surveillance as part of terrorism investigations. According to a survey released in December 2006, two thirds of Americans believe that the FBI and other federal agencies are intruding on their privacy rights (The Washington Post, December 13, 2006). A report from the U.S. Justice Department, dated April 28, 2006, disclosed that its use of electronic surveillance and search warrants in national security investigations jumped 15 percent in 2005. According to the report, the FBI issued 9,254 national security letters in 2005, covering 3,501 U.S. citizens and legal foreign residents. The Justice Department said the data did not include what probably were thousands of additional letters issued to obtain more limited information about some individuals or letters that were issued about targets who were in the U.S. illegally (The Los Angeles Times, April 29, 2006). Reports show a Pentagon research team monitors more than 5,000 Jihadist web sites, focusing daily on the 25 to 100 most hostile and active (MSNBC News Service, May 4, 2006). An internal memo of the FBI shows that the agency has spent resources gathering information on antiwar and environmental protesters and on activists who feed vegetarian meals to the homeless. In the United States, the government has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans. According to USA TODAY, more employers feel they have justifiable reason to pry, track workers' whereabouts through Global Positioning System (GPS). satellite, implant employees with microchips with their knowledge and hire private investigators to check up on what employees are really doing at work. According to a study by the American Management Association and The ePolicy Institute, 76 percent of companies monitor employees' website connections, 65 percent block access to specific sites, and 36 percent track the content, keystrokes and time spent at the keyboard. More than half of employers retain and review e-mail messages (USA TODAY, November 7, 2006).

As The Associated Press reported on January 4, 2007, a signing statement attached to postal legislation by U.S. administration may have opened the way for the government to open mail without a warrant. An internal review of the U.S. State Department has found that U.S. officials screened the public statements and writings of private citizens for criticism of the administration before deciding whether to select them for foreign speaking projects. The vetting practice, The Washington Post said, appears to have been part of the administration's pattern of controlling information, muffling dissenting views (The Washington Post, November 2, 2006). On May 23, 2006, Electronic Frontier Foundation, a U.S.-based organization committed to protecting citizens' privacy, accused the FBI for undercutting the intent of the privacy law, saying the agency has built a database with more than 659 million records culled from more than 50 FBI and other government agency sources (http://www.eff.org/press/, Aug. 30, 2006).

The United States touts itself as the "beacon of democracy," but the U.S. mode of democracy is in essence one in which money talks.

In 2004, candidates for the House of Representatives who raised less than $1 million had almost no chance of winning, USA TODAY quoted a spokesman for the Center for Responsive Politics as saying in a report on October 29, 2006. The average successful Senate campaign cost $7 million, it said. In 2006, all state campaigns in the United States were predicted to cost about $2.4 billion. In California, the oil and tobacco industries were the year's two biggest spenders with a total of $161.6 million, and they became the two biggest winners (The Los Angeles Times, November 9, 2006). In the House race in Pennsylvania, the National Republican Congressional Committee spent $3.9 million, mostly in ads against Democratic candidate Lois Murphy, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spent $3 million against Republican candidate Jim Gerlach (The Baltimore Sun, November 6, 2006). Seventy-four percent of respondents to a new Opinion Research poll say the U.S. Congress is generally out of touch with average Americans, as CNN reported on October 18, 2006, and 79 percent of the surveyed say they feel big business does have too much influence over the administration's decisions.

IV. On Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

The United States is the richest country in the world, but it lacks proper guarantee for people's economic, social and cultural rights.

The Americans in poverty constitute the "Third World" of U.S. society. A report released by the U.S. Census Bureau on August 29, 2006 said there were 37 million people living in poverty in 2005, accounting for 12.6 percent of total U.S. population. The report also said there were 7.7 million families in poverty and one out of eight Americans was living in poverty in 2005. The poverty rates of Cleveland and Detroit were as high as 32.4 percent and 31.4 percent respectively and nearly one out of three was living under the poverty line. AFP reported on February 24, 2007 that based on the latest available U.S. census data, the McClatchy Newspapers analysis found that almost 16 million Americans live in "deep or severe poverty," the highest number since at least 1975, up by 26 percent from 2000 to 2005. Between 2000 and 2005, the U.S. economy grew by 12 percent in real terms and productivity, measured by output per hour worked in the business sector, rose 17 percent. Over the same period, the median hourly wage--the wage the average American takes home---rose only 3 percent in real (inflation-adjusted). terms. That compared with a 12 percent gain in the previous five years was lower than it was in 2000 (Financial Times, November 2, 2006).

Hunger and homelessness remain a critical issue. A report released by U.S. Department of Agriculture on November 15, 2006 revealed that in the previous year 34.8 million Americans did not have enough money or other resources to buy food. A survey on 23 U.S. cities including Chicago, Boston and Los Angeles by the U.S. Conference of Mayors found that in 2006 requests for emergency food assistance increased by an average of 7 percent over 2005, with 74 percent of the cities registering an increase. Also, requests for emergency shelter assistance increased by an average of 9 percent over 2005, with 68 percent of the surveyed cities showing an increase (U.S. Conference of Mayors-Sodexho, Inc. Release 2006 Hunger and Homelessness Survey, www.usmayors.org). Currently, there are 600,000 or so homeless people nationwide, including 16,000 homeless in Washington D.C. and 3,800 in New York City (The New York Times, The Washington Post and Reuters reports, October to December, 2006). It is estimated there are 3,000 to 4,000 homeless people in Baltimore on any given night (The Baltimore Sun, November 20, 2006). In Hawaii, around 1,000 homeless people are living in tents along beaches (The New York Times, December 4, 2006). A survey found that in Los Angeles City and surrounding communities there were 88,345 homeless people, and the mayor declared the city to be "the capital of homelessness in America." (The Los Angeles Times, January 12, 2006).

The average living standards in the United States are among the highest in the world but the United States lags behind most countries in legal protection for labor and family-friendly policies in the workplace. The Voice of America reported on February 4, 2007 that a study of 173 countries with high, middle and low income jointly conducted by Harvard University and McGill University found the United States is one of the only five countries that do not guarantee some form of paid maternity leave, the other four countries being Lesotho, Liberia, Swaziland and Papua New Guinea. Of the 173 countries, 137 provide paid annual leave but there is no federal law to guarantee such leave in the United States. One hundred and forty-five countries provide paid sick leave for their workers but the United States has no federal law on this, leaving it to be decided by employers. The United States has no law on maximum work week length or a limit on mandatory overtime per week, but 134 countries have laws in this regard. There is no guarantee in the United States to protect working women's right to breast-feeding but at least 107 countries ensure their working women have breast-feeding breaks. The United States guarantees fathers neither paid paternity nor paid parental leave, but 65 countries grant fathers either paid paternity or paid parental leave.

Quite a few Americans are not covered by basic health insurance. A report released by the U.S. Census Bureau on August. 29, 2006 said the number of people without health insurance coverage rose to 46.6 million in 2005, accounting for 15.9 percent of the total population and up 1.3 million over 2004. Minnesota had the lowest percentage of uninsured of 8.7 percent and Texas had the highest percentage of uninsured of 25 percent. From 2003 to 2006, the basic Medicare premium increased more than 50 percent to $88.50 a month from $58.7 in 2003 and it was predicted that it would rise to $98.20 in 2007. The administration said the cost of the drug benefit would grow an average of 11.5 percent a year in the next decade, more than twice as fast as the economy (The New York Times, May 2, 2006). Statistics showed, in the past six years, average annual Medicare cost of a U.S. family reached $11,500 or nearly $3,000 for each American every year. More and more Americans are unable to afford the high Medicare expenses and looking for overseas medical treatment. In 2005, some 500,000 uninsured Americans trekked overseas for medical treatment, according to the National Coalition on Health Care (Eagle-Tribune, November 27, 2006).

V. On Racial Discrimination

Racial segregation and discrimination are still deep-seated in the United States. African-Americans and other colored people are still living in "another United States."