{"id":254,"date":"2003-12-06T06:15:05","date_gmt":"2003-12-06T10:15:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/wordpress\/?p=254"},"modified":"2003-12-06T06:15:05","modified_gmt":"2003-12-06T10:15:05","slug":"forgiveness-as-it-suits-us-interests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=254","title":{"rendered":"Forgiveness as it suits U.S. interests"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I’ve mentioned before, I transcribed a few of the interviews for Meria Heller’s book The Awakening of An American-How My Country Broke My Heart<\/i><\/a>. It’s a great collection of views from some of the most important alternative newsmakers in the immediate aftermath of 9\/11. <\/p>\n

One I did was Howard Winant’s, a Professor of Sociology<\/a> at Temple University<\/a> in Pennsylvania and the author of the book The World is a Ghetto: Race and Democracy Since WWII<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n

Professor Winant was part of a delegation that attended the second-level, or NGO level, of The United Nations World Conference Against Racism<\/a> that took place in August-September of 2001 in Durbin, South Africa. You might recall the United States refused to participate in it.<\/p>\n

At one point in the interview he gave the following as the reason why he felt the Bush administration shunned it:<\/p>\n

p: 101<\/a><\/p>\n

I think, in a general way, it was the specter of having to confront its own dark past that the U.S. was fleeing from, [that] was the reason it withdrew. There were also the issues of Zionism, racism, anti-semitism, treatment of the Palestinian people, which were highly-charged issues and which the U.S. gave as its official reason for not continuing to participate. Central as those issues are, I don’t believe they were the real<\/i> reasons for the U.S. to withdraw.<\/div>\n

I don’t mean to minimise him or the brilliant interview he gave by selecting that one passage as he represented his life’s work and command of the subject as few could. <\/p>\n

I do want to use it to stir the fresh dirt piling on the grave of U.S. hypocrisy so far as coming to terms with its egregious past actions, while selectively using such charges to condemn others, and allowing itself privileges it refuses to afford countries that have yet to come under its absolute authority.<\/p>\n

I’m speaking specifically of this recent announcement that James Baker III has been named George’s personal envoy “in seeking an international deal to lower and refinance Iraq’s staggering foreign debt.”<\/i><\/a>, apparently with the blessing of John Kerry.<\/p>\n

And I was reminded of yet another moment in Professor Winant’s interview and his comments on Africa’s debt, an issue the U.S. has so far refused to be so gracious in forgiving:<\/p>\n

pp: 115-116<\/a><\/p>\n

HW: This conference also pointed to the link between the “haves” and the “have-nots” of the world. This is something that is so much overlapped with patterns of racism we don’t often think about it. When they protested in Seattle, students and trade unionists and ecology people, they were protesting against the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the system of exploitation it involves, like sweatshops throughout the world in the underdeveloped parts, the debt crisis that exists for these people. I didn’t realise before going to Africa and to this conference, how much the burden of debt on Africa impoverishes the people there. The national debt that different countries in Africa owe to the IMF (International Monetary Fund), to the World Bank, and to the big private lenders, the big banks, Wall Street, and all that. It’s in the hundreds of billions of dollars.<\/p>\n

HW: The important thing to recognise is that they’ve already paid back the money they borrowed, but because there’s so much interest charged, the debt has not really been significantly reduced, even though they’ve paid back everything they ever got from those banks.<\/p><\/div>\n

Compassion or hypocrisy, you decide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I’ve mentioned before, I transcribed a few of the interviews for Meria Heller’s book The Awakening of An American-How My Country Broke My Heart. It’s a great collection of views from some of the most important alternative newsmakers in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdXTf-46","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}