[quote]After being the subject of global scorn following a highly critical UN report on its human rights abuses, North Korea has released a "news analysis" on the US human rights record. Calling the US "the world's worst human rights abuser", the state-run Korea Central News Agency says the nation is "a living hell, as elementary rights to existence are ruthlessly violated". Racism, crime and unemployment run rampant, they write. Lax gun laws are "boosting murderous crimes," and housing prices are soaring, "leaving many people homeless". (The North Koreans lose points for failing to cite Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Such low-hanging fruit!) "The number of impoverished people increased to 46.5 millions last year," they continue, "and one sixth of the citizens and 20-odd% of the children are in the grip of famine in New York City." While the US burns, they say, US President Barack Obama "indulges himself in luxury almost every day, squandering hundred millions of dollars on his foreign trip in disregard of his people's wretched life". There is, of course, the obligatory reference to drones and the NSA surveillance scandal: The US government has monitored every movement of its citizens and foreigners, with many cameras and tapping devices and even drones involved, under the pretext of "national security". And the North Koreans call out the Trayvon Martin shooting: The US true colours as a kingdom of racial discrimination was fully revealed by last year's case that the Florida Court gave a verdict of not guilty to a white policeman who shot to death an innocent black boy.[/quote] then you get this from the US side [quote]So how are the US media responding to these allegations? With a resounding "Yeah, but..." The Daily Beast's Nina Strochlic says it's "disturbing" that North Koreans didn't have to embellish the statistics very much to make their point: The Atlantic's Matt Ford takes a line-by-line look at the North Korean allegations and finds quite a few shortcomings, however. "It's unclear whether North Korea's economic analysis here is intentionally misleading or just factually deficient," he writes. KCNA did correctly observe that 46.5 million Americans live in poverty and that the number is rising. One in five children in New York City does live in a food-scarce home, but the claim that these children live in the "grip of famine" is hyperbolic. The Washington Post's Adam Taylor says that gun crime is the only part of North Korea's statistics that is "truly debatable": While it's true that the number of mass shootings has risen in the United States, violent crime in general has dropped over the past few years, with homicide rates down in most major cities.[/quote] Thoughts?