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START_THE_CLOCK

                                                 November 21, 2006

   Where do you start the clock?

   Few, if any countries don't
   have some historical skeletons
   embedded in the foundations.                   ON_HUMAN_BONES

   Certainly not the
   United States,                       Plus:  Slavery;
   with it's poor                       Spanish-American War;
   treatment of                         The Philippines;
   Native Americans.                    WWII internment of
                                        Japanese-Americans;
   And yet, few people                  Vietnamese War...
   think it's a sane,
   reasonable notion to
   attempt to "Give the
   country back to the     You know, the Indians
   Indians".               that aren't from India.

   The problem, of                   Give Columbus a
   course, is the sheer              break.  Okay, so he
   amount of time                    made a few little
   that's gone by:                   mistakes...

   We'd be "giving the                      Hasn't the statute of
   country back" to                         limitations expired
   people who *might* be                    on those yet?
   the descendants of
   the people it was
   grabbed from.

           And the people doing the
           "giving back" would also
           have at best a weak
           connection to the people            "grab" is a useful
           who grabbed it.                      word: it doesn't
                                                stipulate that it
                                                was owned by anyone
  In the case of the                            the way "stole" would.
  Israel-Palestine affair,
  I notice that people tend
  to call for Israel to return
  to it's pre-1967 borders
  rather than trying to roll      I would guess that
  back the clock to 1948.         the idea is that a      And there are many
                                  UN sanction is          Israeli citizens
                                  better than none.       who don't deserve
                                                          the original sin
                                                          of 1948 on their
                                                          doorstep.

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