UN: Forgotten urban poor a "living time bomb"

LONDON (Reuters) - The world's growing number of poor slum dwellers is a ticking time bomb that governments dare not ignore, the United Nations said on Friday.

The world will pass a critical point in 2007 when the majority of its 6 billion people will be urbanised, the world body said.

One-third of them will be slum dwellers, many trapped in poverty but overlooked by governments and with no prospects of improvement.

"When a critical mass of people are in one place, if you don't empower them they will empower themselves through revolution," Anna Tibaijuka, head of UN-HABITAT said in London, presenting the agency's State of the World's Cities 2006/7 report....

http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=884472006

but mass death through contagion is much more likely, contagion that will start with the poorest and spread even to the walled wealthy.

That's when the wealthy really turn on the poor.

Revolution, followed by things getting even worse, followed by contagion, starvation, and war. Sometimes it's worse when the poor turn on the poor.

The walled wealthy will fly to a safe country, and return--possibly--when the flies have cleared. If not them, then their descendants.