Paying Reparations Forward

DN Wednesday, December 29, 2010: Discuss the following questions with your family:

1. Allan Nairn believes that the middle class should pay the indigenous people back for their “unearned inheritance” – good food, clean water, safe neighborhoods, warm houses, all “given” to them while they were watching cartoons on a Saturday morning. Is this true? Did our generation get all the basics for a good and secure life without anyone having to work for it? Should the working class pay taxes for reparations for the stolen gold decorating Versailles and the Vatican?
2. Is there another way to pay reparations forward, so that every child seven generations from now is born with the opportunity for a good and secure life? Speculate on some ways that this could be accomplished.
3. What is Allan Nairn’s relationship to Amy Goodman historically? How was his skull fractured in East Timor?
4. Would it be a good thing for US labor to compete with Chinese sweatshop workers, even if they demand higher wages? Why or why not? Will this increase employment in the US?
5. Do you agree with Allan Nairn that the US military is a terrorist organization and that paying taxes is giving material support to them?