It is interesting to read this section. Obviously I have not travelled as much or the to as many of the locations as the Carters, but I have traveled enough where I feel like I could agree to their interpretations…

CNN’s Larry King Live
TRANSCRIPT of interview with Former President of the United States of America Jimmy Carter and Former First Lady of the United States Rosalyn Carter
Original Air Date: 15 November 2002
Note as of 09 December 2005, the original full transcript could be found at http://www.cartercenter.org/search/viewindexdoc.asp

(preceding transcript text omitted)

KING: Mr. President, you’ve traveled the world extensively. I don’t know anyone who travels more than you. Why do so many people hate this country?

PRESIDENT CARTER: Larry, Rosalynn and I have been in more than 120 nations in the world, mostly the very poorest and most destitute and needy people. We have programs at the Carter Center now in 65 countries, 35 of them in African and not coincidentally. And it’s given us a chance to have an incident into the lives of those people and the attitude of those people. And I think there is a sense that the United States has become too arrogant, too dominant, too self satisfied, proud of our wealth, believing that we deserve to be the richest and most powerful and influential nation in the world. I think they feel that we don’t really care about them, which is quite often true. Because they see that a tiny bit of financial help would change their lives for the better. I think there’s a feeling, too, that our emphasis has been on countries in the Third World that have oil, and countries like Mali or Burkina Faso or Ghana or Benin or even Haiti and Guyana are not even on our radar screen. They all know, the ones that are at all educated, that among the developed, industrialized nations on earth, the United States is at the bottom, way at the bottom, in providing humanitarian aid for peace and for human rights and for housing and for health and education. We give about one-thousandth of our Gross National Product for development assistance. That’s one-tenth of one percent. And the average European country gives four times as much. For every time an American gives a dollar, a citizen of Norway gives $17. And I think that we — maybe after the tragedy of 9/11, we’ll begin to see that a very tiny investment of help in those poverty- stricken countries will prevent the hopelessness and lack of self- respect and despair and anger and violence and potential terrorism. And that will be of great benefit to our own country.

KING: I’ll have Rosalynn chime in on that right after we come back from the break. The Carter Center is 20 years old today, and of course the president is this year’s recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. We’ll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: We’re back with the Carters. Rosalynn, you wanted to add something on that question of why we’re not liked?

MRS. CARTER: I do, because it’s not the American people. The American people don’t see what we see. They don’t see the ravages of war. We go into these countries and see people who have lost everything, even their babies. And if the American people could see that, they would respond overwhelmingly. We’re talking about the government and our foreign aid program. But if people in our country could see, as I’ve said before, the poverty and the terrible conditions these people live in. And when we’re there, they don’t ask us what the United States can do to help them. They ask us if we know anybody in Japan or if we know anybody in Norway, because those countries give more. But I still want to impress on you that is not the American people, who are good, and you know how they respond to if there’s a tornado, an earthquake in a country, and we see it on television and so forth, people respond to it.

KING: Well, Mr. President, isn’t the government the make up of the people?

PRESIDENT CARTER: Well, in a way, Larry, but you know, there’s an interesting thing that has been kind of surprising to me. When I go to Belgium or to the Netherlands or to Norway or Sweden or Denmark or Finland, even to other countries, I may not name them all, when they run for Parliament, one of their most attractive political planks is, “If I’m elected, I’m going to make sure that our country will do everything in its power, say in Africa, to promote justice and peace and freedom and democracy and human rights, and alleviate suffering there.” And it’s a very popular thing. But can you imagine what would happen for an American candidate for Congress to say, “If I’m elected, I’m going to increase foreign aid?” It would be suicidal. So you put your finger on it; foreign aid in this country has a bad name, but in other countries it’s a right thing for the government to do. And that’s where we at the Carter Center quite often
have to turn.

(subsequent transcript text omitted)

but i am working out aggressively again, so that is a good thing…

Well I was reading a friend’s posting on racism in America, and the responses to it, and I have to say that I am really amazed. Not much at his assertions but really at the majority of response which offered complete and total validation. I personally strongly disagreed with it and with the follow-on supportive comments for reasons you can read in my original response.

Particularly the poster from Toronto when I gave the counterfiet money example and her response to it. By that logic for example, because it is assumed that black people shoplift more, then by extension, security guards trailing all black patrons in shops simply because they walk in is acceptable. After all, shoplifting is a big problem and costs billions in revenue and profit, right? The logic seems wrong not because I disagree with her statement, but I disagree with the foundation on what they are based on.

Read it all and give me your thoughts, whether in response here or in e-mail. I’ve put the thread up for sharing with some other multi-national, multi-cultural groups I am a member of (you all who read those threads will see it soon), if only because I need some confirmation that my position is not totally off-base. Sure, shoot me for being idealistic or focusing too much on the bigger picture at the expense of the question, but this is the first time that it would have truly felt wrong *not* to respond.

2005 has been a crazy year. So much has changed for so many in such a short space of time. Every year I endeavour to make my personal website reflective of my mood and the time. In 2004, it was all about the darker side of live. And then the 2004 election came and the result of George W Bush winning re-defined my sense of good and evil, since evil won the election. And that affected me for the better part of a year.

Now it’s a year later and 2005 has seen so much happen. This year, 3 friends became HIV+ (after knowing no one who had been infected since 1999); a friend got divorced; family re-affirmed that they mean more to me than anything else; and I took stock of where I am in life and where I want to go.

So my Website’s theme for 2006 is quite simple: Hope Springs Eternal. Enough of the sadness, pain, and war. Let’s move on to do what we can for brighter futures.

Version 4.0 of my webiste will be up on 15 January. If you have any idea on what would contribute to my theme, let me and know and I might just code it in 🙂

Today I decided that I would attack the CD pile and put them in their proper places. I’m missing a lot of CDs that will be hard to replace 🙁

My only hope is that 6-7 years ago I decide to put a lot of my music collection onto CDs…I consolidated a bunch of music into about 15 CDs. If it not on one of those CDs, replacement costs will run about $500. Not willing to spend that, so it will have to be a 12-month 2006 goal.

Is finding 12000 kronor you didn’t even know you had *smile*

good thing…that iPod Video was expensive 🙂