it's quite possible that in 50 years nobody will care about reruns of Babylon 5.
It's also possibile that in a few hundred years people will study B5 the way we study the works of an popular, but not masterful (as considered in his own time), 16th century playright.
That's why it's vital to preserve everything; we lack the perspective needed to tell what (if anything) from our culture can survive the test of time to be considered great works.
A popular myth, but not true, as shown by survivors of extraordinary falls.
One woman survived a fall from 10 kilometers. (She was strapped into a seat and may have enjoyed some protection from that; however this guy jumped out of a plane at 18,000 feet, about 5.5 kilometers, and thanks to trees and snow cushioning his fall, suffered on a sprained leg.)
Ginsberg's Howl notes the story of Tuli Kupferberg (of the band The Fugs) who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge and survived.
Within this broad framework, it is the mandate of legislators...
Incorrect. Your quotation is out of context - it is not a mandate, it is part the enumeration of powers of Congress.
Congress has the authority to create copyrights and patents. It is not constitutionally required to exercise that power, any more than it is required to borrow money or declare war.
Note also that said power is to create artifical rights only for authors and inventors - not to their employers, heirs, assignees, or anyone else. Modern copyright law bears little relation to the actual legal power of Congress.
What I learned was true americans did not want the jobs, heck even I hated mine at the time. Another truth is many of the american employees were lazy, unproductive, had low self esteem and took little pride in their work.
Nah. What you learned, or should have learned, was that most native-born Americans didn't want the jobs at sub-sustenance wages, and that the few troubled and desperate enough to try to take them, were lazy, unproductive, had low self esteem and took little pride in their work.
Given a choice between no job at all (with the time to look for a decent job), or a job that pays so low that you can't live on it, only troubled or desperate people will take the job.
So how is it that immigrants can live on these low wages? Some are just more frugal, having lived in even worse poverty; that's been the case with new immigrants through the centuries.
But it's not so simple as telling poor Americans, "be willing to lower your standards and live like people in the third world." Many immigrants live in substandard housing, so substandard as to violate zoning and other laws (but really cheap). Many of those who are here illegally avoid expenses responsbile law-abiding citizens incur, like taxes or car insurance or health insurance, and externalize their costs on to the community.
Again, you are comparing this student to peaceful sit in protests.
I'm comparing them to non-violent protests, yes, but anti-abortion demonstrations where people lie down in front of clinics to block access are not "sit-ins" (as no one is sitting).
He went limp when they attempted to "escort" him out and he continued to scream and be abusive.
Going limp is exactly what nonviolent protesters often do. It demonstrates a total lack of combative intent, i.e., non-violence.
Screaming is irrelvevant, it's not a threat to anyone. "Stop screaming or I'm going to torture you" is a pretty clear violation of First Amendment protections. Distubing the peace may justify arrest. It does not justify torture under color of law enforcement.
And I've seen videos of limp and screaming anti-abortion protesters being carried away. but none being shocked.
and after repeated warnings, where he refused to comply he was tazed.
"Refusal to comply" may justify arrest. It does not justify torture under color of law enforcement. Period.
You do not call attempting to incite others into a riot combative?
Irrelevant, since he in no way attemped to incite a riot; but no, this guy was in no way "combative". "Combative" means "ready or inclined to fight"; a guy who lies down on the floor is pretty much demonstrating an disinclination to fight.
Oh, and you do not hear about regular white folk getting tazered because no one cares, not because it does not happen.
I didn't say "regular white folk", obviosuly white criminals as well as black criminals get tasered. I mentioned anti-abortion protestors. Can you show me a case of right-wing non-violent anti-abortion protestors getting shocked or sprayed with toxic chemicals, rather than being relatively gently carried onto a bus to jail? Are you suggesting that it would not be all over the news if something like that happened?
I was in college 15 years ago. I couldn't go anywhere or do hardly anything without my university ID.
I was in college just a bit over 15 years ago myself (actually 15 years ago I was wrapping up my first semister of grad school), at the University of Maryland, College Park. My ID stayed in my wallet except when I was checking books out of the library or buying a movie ticket at the student union.
What authoritarian school did you go to where people were always demanding to see your ID?
The point of officers..getting tazed and OC'd during training is...to know exactly how much is too much
The subjective experience of young heathy and tough police trainees is not the way to determine "exactly how much is too much" when it comes to electric shock on random members of the public, any more than if you were to come into my karate class and test black belt students to determine how strong a punch a random member of the public could take.
The order of magnitude of the police response is out of whack with his actions, but the resquest to present ID was reasonable.
Depends. I don't know the facts of the case before the video, but if they were going around checking everyone's ID, yes, that was probably reasonable. If they were only checking, say, people who looked "foreign", if the rent-a-cop walked by a bunch of blond-haired blue-eyes white kids and came up to the brown skinned guy and said "paper, please", it would have been reasonable for him to be upset. (Not to get violently upset, but to get upset enough to demand, "Hey, what's the deal here?!")
For fun, recently, I was tasered. I will say this. It hurts fierce, but it didn't keep me from moving at all.
For fun, a few times a month some of us strap on some thin protective pads and hit each other. I will say this: shots that will knock the wind out of one person, leaving them curled up on the floor unable to move, will have no effect on another.
That's all irrelevant, though. Even if he *had* produced a valid student ID, he was *still* required to leave the premises after being told to do so by the private property owner or an agent thereof.
That's all irrelevant, though. Even if he *had* been trespassing, the use of potentially lethal torture by electric shock is not an acceptable means of getting him to leave.
Retailers are *already* empowered to detain anyone suspected of stealing until law enforcement arrives.
The fact that I decline to let you search my bags is not reasonable grounds for suspicion of theft; therefore, attemping to detain me merely for saying "no, thanks" as the dude at the door offers to check my receipt against my goods, is false arrest. And any rent-a-cop who attempts to place me under false arrest, who assults me to prevent my freedom of movement, is going to get hurt.
Like it or not, we have to comply with our law enforcement officials.
Like it or not, law enforcement officials have to comply with the law. When they do not, they are simply thugs with badges, whose actions should be stopped by any means necessary.
"Show us your papers or get tortured." You think that's ok?
The description of the incident does not indicate how cooperative that the Iranian was.
You do realize that by describing the guy solely by his ethnic background, you're conveying the subtext "It's not like he was an decent White American,s o that makes it ok," don't you?
If you want consciencious yet capable officers, you have to pay for them. Force your local politicians to fire and prosecute consistently and have them pay officers enough to attract educated individuals who want to positively affect their communities.
I expected to see police brutality, not a model of LEO restraint and professionalism.
The fact that the infliction of torture upon a person who was not any threat, is being described as "a model of LEO restraint and professionalism", pretty much sums up the state of America's decent into a police state. "Well, they could have maimed him, but they only used potentially lethal electric shock to torture him."
Just because somebody screams a lot doesn't mean you have to let them have their way.
Nor does it mean that you torture them.
If someone goes limp, you can pick him up. As I noted in a post up-thread, you never see anti-abortion protesters who lie down in front of clinics get shocked, do you? The cops cuff 'em, pick 'em up, and haul them away.
These "police" were thugs; it's too bad that Reagan signed the Mulford Act to take away citizen's guns so they couldn't challenge police brutality.
He was tazered for not leaving when asked and after he became combative and disruptive.
Not leaving when asked does not justify the use of potentially lethal torture. (Yes, stunguns are potentially lethal, and the accurate word for the deliberate infliction of agony to cause a person who is not an immediate threat to anyone's safety to comply with your demands is "torture".)
He was disruptive in that he was shouting, yes, but this is a strange new use of the word "combative".
Funny how you never see, for example, anti-abortion protesters who lie down in front of clinics get hit with stunguns or tortured with chemicals. Seems like it's always some leftist protesters, or some dark-skinned person.
The only problem with this is that the current terrorists DO wear turbans and follow islam.
I beleive the GP's point was that one who engages in acts of terrorism, is by definition not following Islam - just as a "Christian" who shoots an OB/Gyn is not following the teachings of Jeshua ben Joseph.
I'm curious what this means. Does it mean a big cash payment to every Indian? Or does it mean making sure that treaties are honored?
In the case of treaties, it means that the treaties must be honored, and that payment to the Native nations - not directly to individual citizens of those nations, but to tribal governments - should be made in reparation for the harm caused by years of violations.
There are other cases in which direct harm was done to individual persons - Native children taken away from their parents, or women pushed into sterilization procedures. Compensatory payments should be made directly to those people.
People should be responsible for their own actions, yes, but not for their ancestors' actions. I had no control over anything my parents, grandparents, etc. did during their lifetimes.
You, as an individual, do not bear responsbility for your ancestors actions.
However, people often act not as individuals but as nation-states (and other organizations) that outlive individual people. Those nations bear collective responsibility for their past actions (just as they gain collective benefit).
I, personally, bear no responsibility for the U.S. violation of treaties with Native nations, I didn't make those decisions. But the U.S. is responsbile for those violations, and as a citizen, I bear a share of the responsibility that my nation bears. Practically, that means that it's going to be my tax dollars that pay for reparations that justice requires.
But it is my citizenship, not my ancestry, that roots this responsibility.
The reason that the radioactive waste from a fusion reactor is short-lived, is because it is very hot - exactly the kind of thing you don't want in your living room. The reactor vessel is bathed in a heavy neutron flux, creating all sorts of interesting isotopes.
(The theoretical possibility of aneutronic fusion deserves a mention.)
Tritium is also an inevitable byproduct of hydrogen fusion, and some fraction of that will escape into the environment. Tritiated water is problematic.
And of course any fusion plant is going to necessitate all kinds of heavy industry, producing the many of the same sort of byproducts as photovoltaic manufacturing.
This is not to say that fusion isn't attractive when compared with uranium fision or fossil fuels, and I certainly advocate fusion research; but it's not at all free of waste and pollution issues.
That would help, but only if the west would abolish farm subsidies for their own farmers.
If your goal is to allow people to develop a sustenance level of farming, growing food to feed themselves, farm subsidies on the other side of the planet are meaningless.
Part of the problem is the idea that everyone should grow rice or wheat and sell it on the global market, rather than growing locally native crops to feed themselves.
However, bashing it through code-words, questioning the very right of its people to exist, echoing false claims about history? Those are not reasonable.
And those are not things that I have done. I've used no "code words"; Zionism is the proper name for the political movement and ideology in question. I've certainly not questioned any people's right to exist, I've just questioned political actions. And while I'm not a historical expert, it's clear that my understanding of the history involved covers facts that yours does not.
You are forgetting (of course) the real history: that the Jews there were indiginous natives or settlers who came there and bought land.
You are (conveniently) starting the story well in the middle. It's as if one were to argue that Native Americans who resisted settlers had no claim, since the settlers had after all bought land - ignoring that the claims of those from whom they bought the land were based on theft.
Any meaningful discussion of the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict must start with the British Mandate and the Balfour Declaration, and the British-backed immigration of Jewish settlers into the area in the 1920s and 1930s.
One has to have a certain degree of antisemitism to be "sad" that Israel even exists.
One has to be lacking a certain degree of common sense to think that the events in that region from 1917 to today have proceeded in the best imaginable fashion, and not to lament the failure of better alternatives, based on cooperation rather than colonialism.
Before the Balfour Declaration, Jews and Arabs lived side by side in a state of general tolerance; imagine if radicals in the Zionist movement and the British government hadn't screwed that up, if a small Jewish homeland had been allowed to peacefully develop.
Imagine if Pinsker had gained more support for founding a Jewish homeland in Argentina or some other Western nation, by peacefully negotiating for land; certainly that would have let to a better situation than today's daily violence.
Imagine if, after WWII, the Jewish people who had contributed so much to European culture and had been so horribly persecuted in the Nazi holocaust, had been given in reparation land in Germany to found a nation.
One can imagine dozens of alternatives to the current situation of a failed state propped up by America, a poisonous political sitation that is corroding the great legacy of Jewish culture.
If one can look at the current situation and not be sad, then one is insane.
Thanks for the nice antisemitic intentional misreading of history.
Please substantiate or withdrawl your accustion of anti-Semitism.
I'm sure my Jewish friends, including a few former lovers, would agree that I have no prejudice against Jews, or other Semetic peoples. Indeed I have a great respect for Jewish culture - and I think it's a shame how it was perverted in the founding of Israel.
Indeed, it was the fact that anyone who questions the actions of Israel is immediately labeled an "anti-Semite", rather than being met with actual argument, that first caused me to question the conventional wisdom on Israel.
the "theft" of protecting people's own land and the "Zionist" bogeyman
The land in question was owned by Arabs. The British government (influnced by millennialist Christians who believed that Jerusalem had to be returned to the Jews so that Jesus can come back) stole it, to give to Zionists - that is, people seeking to establish a Jewish homeland.
"Zionism", while often used as a scare word, is the proper term for the movement to obtain a homeland for the Jewish people. Some called for it to be established peacefully, some were willing to use force; some said it could be anywhere (indeed, some argued that the U.S. was it), some insisted it had to be in Palestine; some were secular, some believed that God had promised "his people" some piece of land.
One strain of it, sadly the one that became dominant, called for that homeland to be established in Palestine, by any means necessary, with strong religious overtones.
Exactly how far back in time do we need to go in paying reparations?
When people who are still alive who have been the victims of the acts in question, reparations are due. Perhaps extending to the immediate children and grandchildren of those people (I note that some Holocaust reparations have gone to heirs, not to Holocaust survivors).
Also, so long as political entities remain extant, so do their obligations. The U.S. has treaty obligations of Native nations, even if the people who signed those treaties are long dead. Similarly, as Jack Straw has admitted, Great Britian bears much of the responsbility for the fscked-up sitation in the Middle East, from the Balfour Declaration that started the theft of Arab lands for the benefit of Zionism, to the formation of Iraq; the Britian ought to live up to its obligation to people in those areas.
The Americans will have to pay reparations to the Native Americans (most of whom are only fractionally N.A.) for their land.
For land, no; but reparations are due for extensive contemporary treaty violations with Native nations, and for recent acts of cultural genocide. There are men and women out there now who as infants were stolen from their Native American parents and given to "good White Christian" families to be raised. (In a more good ol'-fashioned style of genocidal policy,thousands of Native women were compeled into sterilizion in the 1970s.)
Similarly, while slavery reparations may be a dead issue, reparations are long overdue for every person who suffered under segregation laws.
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It's also possibile that in a few hundred years people will study B5 the way we study the works of an popular, but not masterful (as considered in his own time), 16th century playright.
That's why it's vital to preserve everything; we lack the perspective needed to tell what (if anything) from our culture can survive the test of time to be considered great works.
A popular myth, but not true, as shown by survivors of extraordinary falls.
One woman survived a fall from 10 kilometers. (She was strapped into a seat and may have enjoyed some protection from that; however this guy jumped out of a plane at 18,000 feet, about 5.5 kilometers, and thanks to trees and snow cushioning his fall, suffered on a sprained leg.)
Ginsberg's Howl notes the story of Tuli Kupferberg (of the band The Fugs) who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge and survived.
Incorrect. Your quotation is out of context - it is not a mandate, it is part the enumeration of powers of Congress.
Congress has the authority to create copyrights and patents. It is not constitutionally required to exercise that power, any more than it is required to borrow money or declare war.
Note also that said power is to create artifical rights only for authors and inventors - not to their employers, heirs, assignees, or anyone else. Modern copyright law bears little relation to the actual legal power of Congress.
Nah. What you learned, or should have learned, was that most native-born Americans didn't want the jobs at sub-sustenance wages, and that the few troubled and desperate enough to try to take them, were lazy, unproductive, had low self esteem and took little pride in their work.
Given a choice between no job at all (with the time to look for a decent job), or a job that pays so low that you can't live on it, only troubled or desperate people will take the job.
So how is it that immigrants can live on these low wages? Some are just more frugal, having lived in even worse poverty; that's been the case with new immigrants through the centuries.
But it's not so simple as telling poor Americans, "be willing to lower your standards and live like people in the third world." Many immigrants live in substandard housing, so substandard as to violate zoning and other laws (but really cheap). Many of those who are here illegally avoid expenses responsbile law-abiding citizens incur, like taxes or car insurance or health insurance, and externalize their costs on to the community.
I'm comparing them to non-violent protests, yes, but anti-abortion demonstrations where people lie down in front of clinics to block access are not "sit-ins" (as no one is sitting).
Going limp is exactly what nonviolent protesters often do. It demonstrates a total lack of combative intent, i.e., non-violence.
Screaming is irrelvevant, it's not a threat to anyone. "Stop screaming or I'm going to torture you" is a pretty clear violation of First Amendment protections. Distubing the peace may justify arrest. It does not justify torture under color of law enforcement.
And I've seen videos of limp and screaming anti-abortion protesters being carried away. but none being shocked.
"Refusal to comply" may justify arrest. It does not justify torture under color of law enforcement. Period.
Irrelevant, since he in no way attemped to incite a riot; but no, this guy was in no way "combative". "Combative" means "ready or inclined to fight"; a guy who lies down on the floor is pretty much demonstrating an disinclination to fight.
I didn't say "regular white folk", obviosuly white criminals as well as black criminals get tasered. I mentioned anti-abortion protestors. Can you show me a case of right-wing non-violent anti-abortion protestors getting shocked or sprayed with toxic chemicals, rather than being relatively gently carried onto a bus to jail? Are you suggesting that it would not be all over the news if something like that happened?
I was in college just a bit over 15 years ago myself (actually 15 years ago I was wrapping up my first semister of grad school), at the University of Maryland, College Park. My ID stayed in my wallet except when I was checking books out of the library or buying a movie ticket at the student union.
What authoritarian school did you go to where people were always demanding to see your ID?
The subjective experience of young heathy and tough police trainees is not the way to determine "exactly how much is too much" when it comes to electric shock on random members of the public, any more than if you were to come into my karate class and test black belt students to determine how strong a punch a random member of the public could take.
Depends. I don't know the facts of the case before the video, but if they were going around checking everyone's ID, yes, that was probably reasonable. If they were only checking, say, people who looked "foreign", if the rent-a-cop walked by a bunch of blond-haired blue-eyes white kids and came up to the brown skinned guy and said "paper, please", it would have been reasonable for him to be upset. (Not to get violently upset, but to get upset enough to demand, "Hey, what's the deal here?!")
I don't know which is the case here.
For fun, a few times a month some of us strap on some thin protective pads and hit each other. I will say this: shots that will knock the wind out of one person, leaving them curled up on the floor unable to move, will have no effect on another.
Just like a punch or kick, the impact of a taser varies widely. Dozens of people have have killed by them; others laugh it off.
Never mistake niceness for weakness, or cruelty for strength.
That's all irrelevant, though. Even if he *had* been trespassing, the use of potentially lethal torture by electric shock is not an acceptable means of getting him to leave.
The fact that I decline to let you search my bags is not reasonable grounds for suspicion of theft; therefore, attemping to detain me merely for saying "no, thanks" as the dude at the door offers to check my receipt against my goods, is false arrest. And any rent-a-cop who attempts to place me under false arrest, who assults me to prevent my freedom of movement, is going to get hurt.
Incorrect. Dozens of people have been killed by tasers.
Like it or not, law enforcement officials have to comply with the law. When they do not, they are simply thugs with badges, whose actions should be stopped by any means necessary.
"Show us your papers or get tortured." You think that's ok?
You do realize that by describing the guy solely by his ethnic background, you're conveying the subtext "It's not like he was an decent White American,s o that makes it ok," don't you?
Considering that stunguns are potentially lethal, I hope not.
Absolutely (as I recently argued here); and I would add, get rid of laws that educated and intelligent individuals will find odious to enforce.
The fact that the infliction of torture upon a person who was not any threat, is being described as "a model of LEO restraint and professionalism", pretty much sums up the state of America's decent into a police state. "Well, they could have maimed him, but they only used potentially lethal electric shock to torture him."
Nor does it mean that you torture them.
If someone goes limp, you can pick him up. As I noted in a post up-thread, you never see anti-abortion protesters who lie down in front of clinics get shocked, do you? The cops cuff 'em, pick 'em up, and haul them away.
These "police" were thugs; it's too bad that Reagan signed the Mulford Act to take away citizen's guns so they couldn't challenge police brutality.
Not leaving when asked does not justify the use of potentially lethal torture. (Yes, stunguns are potentially lethal, and the accurate word for the deliberate infliction of agony to cause a person who is not an immediate threat to anyone's safety to comply with your demands is "torture".)
He was disruptive in that he was shouting, yes, but this is a strange new use of the word "combative".
Funny how you never see, for example, anti-abortion protesters who lie down in front of clinics get hit with stunguns or tortured with chemicals. Seems like it's always some leftist protesters, or some dark-skinned person.
I beleive the GP's point was that one who engages in acts of terrorism, is by definition not following Islam - just as a "Christian" who shoots an OB/Gyn is not following the teachings of Jeshua ben Joseph.
Islam has definite "rules of engagement" for jihad, and killing innocents is right out.
In the case of treaties, it means that the treaties must be honored, and that payment to the Native nations - not directly to individual citizens of those nations, but to tribal governments - should be made in reparation for the harm caused by years of violations.
There are other cases in which direct harm was done to individual persons - Native children taken away from their parents, or women pushed into sterilization procedures. Compensatory payments should be made directly to those people.
You, as an individual, do not bear responsbility for your ancestors actions.
However, people often act not as individuals but as nation-states (and other organizations) that outlive individual people. Those nations bear collective responsibility for their past actions (just as they gain collective benefit).
I, personally, bear no responsibility for the U.S. violation of treaties with Native nations, I didn't make those decisions. But the U.S. is responsbile for those violations, and as a citizen, I bear a share of the responsibility that my nation bears. Practically, that means that it's going to be my tax dollars that pay for reparations that justice requires.
But it is my citizenship, not my ancestry, that roots this responsibility.
The reason that the radioactive waste from a fusion reactor is short-lived, is because it is very hot - exactly the kind of thing you don't want in your living room. The reactor vessel is bathed in a heavy neutron flux, creating all sorts of interesting isotopes.
(The theoretical possibility of aneutronic fusion deserves a mention.)
Tritium is also an inevitable byproduct of hydrogen fusion, and some fraction of that will escape into the environment. Tritiated water is problematic.
And of course any fusion plant is going to necessitate all kinds of heavy industry, producing the many of the same sort of byproducts as photovoltaic manufacturing.
This is not to say that fusion isn't attractive when compared with uranium fision or fossil fuels, and I certainly advocate fusion research; but it's not at all free of waste and pollution issues.
If your goal is to allow people to develop a sustenance level of farming, growing food to feed themselves, farm subsidies on the other side of the planet are meaningless.
Part of the problem is the idea that everyone should grow rice or wheat and sell it on the global market, rather than growing locally native crops to feed themselves.
And those are not things that I have done. I've used no "code words"; Zionism is the proper name for the political movement and ideology in question. I've certainly not questioned any people's right to exist, I've just questioned political actions. And while I'm not a historical expert, it's clear that my understanding of the history involved covers facts that yours does not.
So Orthodox Jews who are opposed to the existance of a Jewish nation (an opinion I do not share) are anti-Semetic?
Lay off the ad hominem fallacies.
You are (conveniently) starting the story well in the middle. It's as if one were to argue that Native Americans who resisted settlers had no claim, since the settlers had after all bought land - ignoring that the claims of those from whom they bought the land were based on theft.
Any meaningful discussion of the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict must start with the British Mandate and the Balfour Declaration, and the British-backed immigration of Jewish settlers into the area in the 1920s and 1930s.
One has to be lacking a certain degree of common sense to think that the events in that region from 1917 to today have proceeded in the best imaginable fashion, and not to lament the failure of better alternatives, based on cooperation rather than colonialism.
Before the Balfour Declaration, Jews and Arabs lived side by side in a state of general tolerance; imagine if radicals in the Zionist movement and the British government hadn't screwed that up, if a small Jewish homeland had been allowed to peacefully develop.
Imagine if Pinsker had gained more support for founding a Jewish homeland in Argentina or some other Western nation, by peacefully negotiating for land; certainly that would have let to a better situation than today's daily violence.
Imagine if, after WWII, the Jewish people who had contributed so much to European culture and had been so horribly persecuted in the Nazi holocaust, had been given in reparation land in Germany to found a nation.
One can imagine dozens of alternatives to the current situation of a failed state propped up by America, a poisonous political sitation that is corroding the great legacy of Jewish culture.
If one can look at the current situation and not be sad, then one is insane.
Please substantiate or withdrawl your accustion of anti-Semitism. I'm sure my Jewish friends, including a few former lovers, would agree that I have no prejudice against Jews, or other Semetic peoples. Indeed I have a great respect for Jewish culture - and I think it's a shame how it was perverted in the founding of Israel.
Indeed, it was the fact that anyone who questions the actions of Israel is immediately labeled an "anti-Semite", rather than being met with actual argument, that first caused me to question the conventional wisdom on Israel.
The land in question was owned by Arabs. The British government (influnced by millennialist Christians who believed that Jerusalem had to be returned to the Jews so that Jesus can come back) stole it, to give to Zionists - that is, people seeking to establish a Jewish homeland.
"Zionism", while often used as a scare word, is the proper term for the movement to obtain a homeland for the Jewish people. Some called for it to be established peacefully, some were willing to use force; some said it could be anywhere (indeed, some argued that the U.S. was it), some insisted it had to be in Palestine; some were secular, some believed that God had promised "his people" some piece of land.
One strain of it, sadly the one that became dominant, called for that homeland to be established in Palestine, by any means necessary, with strong religious overtones.
When people who are still alive who have been the victims of the acts in question, reparations are due. Perhaps extending to the immediate children and grandchildren of those people (I note that some Holocaust reparations have gone to heirs, not to Holocaust survivors).
Also, so long as political entities remain extant, so do their obligations. The U.S. has treaty obligations of Native nations, even if the people who signed those treaties are long dead. Similarly, as Jack Straw has admitted, Great Britian bears much of the responsbility for the fscked-up sitation in the Middle East, from the Balfour Declaration that started the theft of Arab lands for the benefit of Zionism, to the formation of Iraq; the Britian ought to live up to its obligation to people in those areas.
For land, no; but reparations are due for extensive contemporary treaty violations with Native nations, and for recent acts of cultural genocide. There are men and women out there now who as infants were stolen from their Native American parents and given to "good White Christian" families to be raised. (In a more good ol'-fashioned style of genocidal policy,thousands of Native women were compeled into sterilizion in the 1970s.)
Similarly, while slavery reparations may be a dead issue, reparations are long overdue for every person who suffered under segregation laws.