[lbo-talk] South & North

[Patrick Bond]

Wojtek, since you're no US nationalist ignorant of the application of 
political concepts elsewhere, perhaps you'd qualify the use of the word 
reparations when you do these critiques in future, and indeed endorse the 
concept when applied to US companies that made profits from apartheid, 
against the desires of the South African people fighting apartheid. For that 
is what is at issue in our local - and in many global - debates: something 
that is indeed justiciable were the Alien Tort Claims Act to be taken more 
seriously by NY judges (the appeals process continues).

Jubilee South Africa had a similar debate with Iris Young when she visited 
Jo'burg a couple of years ago, by the way, about the two different ways of 
getting at reparations. I can't remember the exact lines of argument, and 
the way that a fantastic strategist like Dennis Brutus has linked the two 
causes (reparations for apartheid, and for slavery). But I suspect there are 
some good answers out there, if you google around, assuming that you want 
lbo-list members to have access to a balanced argument.

One key objective of the apartheid-profits reparations struggle, is to 
continue identifying ways to explain systemic underdevelopment and residual 
poverty, by way of identifying who won and lost. That's not something you'd 
object to, I hope.

Cheers,
P.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Wojtek Sokolowski" <sokol at jhu.edu>
> Not to mention the fact that the only people that would actually benefit
> even if the reparations claim ever succeeded would be lawyers and assorted
> moral entrepreneurs claiming to "represent" the victims (cf. Norman
> Finkelstein,_ The Holocaust Industry_).